IN 

THACKERAY'S 

LONDON 



I N 

THACKERAY'S 

LONDON 

PICTURES AND TEXT 

BY 

F. HOPKINSON SMITH 

AUTHOR OF 

"Charcoals of New and Old 
New York" 



GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

MCMXIII 



T*?? 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF 

TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, 

INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 



COPYRIGHT, I9I3, 
BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 



©CI.A357609 



FOREWORD 

THE author begs to express his indebtedness to the sev- 
eral authorities who have made a close and intimate 
study of the lfie and work of the man whom we all 
love. Notably to my friends William H. Rideing, for his 
"Thackeray's London," and Lawrence Hutton, for his 
"Literary Landmarks of London." To Hare's "Walks in 
London," Taylor's "Historical Guide to London," Lucas's 
"A Wanderer in London," Merivale's "Thackeray," Theo- 
dore Taylor's "Thackeray, the Humorist and Man of 
Letters," Melville's " Thackeray's Country," and Anthony 

Trollope's " Life of Thackeray." 

F. H. S. 

New York, August, 1913. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction XI 

CHAPTER 

I The Charter House ...... 3 

II The Colonel's Rooms 15 

III Where the Colonel Walked and Prayed . 29 

IV Smithfield Market . 41 

V Staple Inn ........ 55 

VI No. 36 Onslow Square ..... 69 

VII Jermyn Street ....... 81 

VIII Berkeley Square . 93 

IX St. George's Church, Hanover Square . . 109 

X The Reform Club 121 

XI Covent Garden 131 

XII Fleet Street and "The Cock" Tavern . . 143 

XIII The Cheshire Cheese 157 

XIV Fleet Street and St. Paul's .... 167 

XV Hare and Lamb Court, Middle Temple . 179 

XVI London Bridge 193 



Vll 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Outside View of Colonel Newcome's Rooms . . 7 

Room in Which Colonel Newcome Died . . . 17t 

Washhouse Court — Grey Friars ..... 31. 

Cloister of Chapel — Grey Friars ..... 35 

Interior of Chapel at Grey Friars .... 39 

Smithfield Market ........ 43 

St. Bartholomew's the Great 47 

Staple Inn 59 

No. 36 Onslow Square ....... 71 

Jermyn Street 83 

Berkeley Square 95 

St. George's Church, Hanover Square . . . 113 

The Reform Club 125 

Covent Garden Market, with Portico of St. Paul's 

Church 137 

The Cock Tavern 145 

Fleet Street from Cock Tavern 149 

Interior of the Cheshire Cheese 159 

Fleet Street and St. Paul's 169 

Hare Court 181 

Lamb Court 187 

London Bridge 195 

ix 



INTRODUCTION 

THE first and only time I saw him was in Baltimore, 
when I was seventeen years old. 
He and Mr. John P. Kennedy, a friend of my 
father, strolled one Saturday afternoon into the Mercantile 
Library where we boys were reading. 

"Look!" came from a tangle of legs and arms bunched up 
in an adjoining easy chair. "That's the Mr. Thackeray 
who is lecturing here." 

My glance followed a directing finger, and rested on a 
tall, rather ungraceful figure, topped by a massive head 
framed about by a fringe of whitish hair, short, fuzzy 
whiskers, crumply collar and black stock. Out of a pink 
face peered two sharp inquiring eyes, these framed again by 
the dark rims of a pair of heavy spectacles, which, from my 
point of sight, became two distinct dots in the round of the 
same pink face. The portrait of Horace Greeley widely 
published during his Presidential campaign — the one all 
throat-whiskers and spectacles — has always recalled to 
my mind this flash glimpse of the great author whom I 
afterward learned to severe. 

As I grew older and began to know him and his work the 
better, this early snapshot — caught upon one of the many 



INTRODUCTION 

millions of films stored away in some one of my brain cells 
— became the central figure about which were grouped a 
series of other portraits quite as real: Red-faced, rakish, 
shabby-looking Captain Costigan, with his hat cocked very 
much over one ear; Major Pendennis, that snob of snobs, 
scrupulously neat in his checked cravat, double gold eye- 
glasses, buff waistcoat and spotless linen, as he sat in his 
club opening his mail, or as he appeared with a yellow face. 
a bristly beard, and a wig out of curl after the dreary night 
spent in the mail-coach, when he went to save his scape- 
grace of a nephew from the clutches of the Fotheringay; 
Becky Sharp, in brilliant full toilette, her fingers and breast 
flashing with the jewels the Marquis of Steyne had given 
her, and the old scoundrel himself in silk stockings and knee- 
breeches, the ribbon of the Garter across his chest; War- 
rington, Clive, and the unspeakable Campaigner; and last, 
and best beloved of all, the pale, thoughtful face of dear 
Colonel Newcome, his black frock-coat, close-buttoned 
about his slim waistline. 

Yes! I have seen and known them all, each and every 
one. I must admit that owing to the long lapse of years, 
and the absence of any such corroborative physiognomies 
as Mr. Greeley's, some of the negatives may be slightly 
blurred, but enough is left of the old films for me to distin- 
guish the originals. More than that, I am willing to make 
oath that I have seen the Colonel himself in the flesh — not 
once, but dozens of times. 

I will even maintain that he is still alive; for I called on 
him during my last visit to London, when these accom- 
panying sketches were made. Though I failed, owing to 



INTRODUCTION 

unfortunate and unforeseen circumstances, to find him at 
home, he having "just stepped out," his associates, or suc- 
cessors, or whatever else you choose to call them, were within 
reach and showed me all over the place. 

Unfortunately, too, Becky, Clive, and the others had 
"just stepped out" — an unaccountable thing to me, for 
they had had no notice of my coming. I had only conformed 
to the etiquette demanded abroad — that is, I had made the 
first call — and the rebuff, if you choose to consider it so, 
was therefore the more regrettable. And yet I was not 
affronted. I know that some day they will return my 
courtesy, every one of them, and the man with the fine head 
and pink face, whom I saw when a boy, will bring them. 
Whether to my lodgings, or my house, or my library, I can- 
not now say, but to some one of the places in which I happen 
to be; and they will keep on coming — no fear of that — as 
long as I can see to read. 

That I should have headed my visiting list with the name 
of the Colonel can surprise nobody. I was at my hotel 
in Jermyn Street, at the time, with my friend Jules, and 
as London is a big place, and the people I wanted to see 
were scattered from the Tower to Smithfield, to say noth- 
ing of Kensington and the neighbourhood round about, 
walking was out of the question. 

"Call a taxi, porter," I said. 

He called it. That is, he stepped out, bareheaded, on 
the narrow sidewalk, blew a whistle which sounded like a 
policeman summoning aid, and up dashed a green and yel- 
low comfort, the match of which does not exist the world 
over — and there are thousands just like it in London. 



INTRODUCTION 

I saw at a glance that the make-up and proportions of 
the machine were all right, for the back hood, when loos- 
ened, sank low enough for me to see my subject over its 
edge (an essential for me, who paint with my back to the 
driver, my easel and charcoals on the cushion of the main 
seat). 

The chauffeur was all right too — no question about that; 
a well-built, broad-shouldered man of forty, with clean-cut 
features, straight nose, firm, straight mouth — a mere slit 
of a mouth — and a straight look out of his eyes. There 
was, moreover, no unnecessary shunting alongside the curb, 
no talking back — just a bend of his head in close attention, 
so as to miss no word, and an earnest, responsive glance. 

"To Charter House, up Smithfield way," I said, after 
the porter had stowed in my canvas, charcoal box, and easel. 

"Yes, sir," and he touched the edge of his hat brim with 
the tip end of his forefinger. 

"Better go out through Holborn and the Market," I 
added. 

"Yes, sir" — the finger again at the brim. This time it 
was the knuckle that touched the edge, followed by a slight 
pause — the salute of a soldier to his superior officer. 

"And slow down when you pass Staple Inn." 

"Yes, sir" — no touch now; the necessaiy courtesies 
and civilities having been accorded — and we were off. 



CHAPTER I 

GREY FRIARS 
THE CHARTER HOUSE 



CHAPTER I 

GREY FRIARS 
THE CHARTER HOUSE 

AS WE whirled up Holborn, I caught now and then, 
/% through the side window of the taxi, glimpses of 
JL JL places I knew. At Staple Inn was the entrance gate 
where I had once painted in the rain, my feet on a plank to 
keep them off the soggy, water-soaked grass — the day the 
old porter had thawed me out before his soft-coal fire, and I 
had sent for something warmer, which we shared between us. 
Then I overlooked the Market, with its long line of big 
white wagons filled with the carcasses of the night's kill; 
and a little later plunged into the unknown, up a side 
alley, down the street of St. John, around a silent, deserted 
Square, hemmed about by an iron railing, the sad, melan- 
choly trees standing like homeless tramps, the raindrops 
dripping from their broad, leaf-covered shoulders — nothing 
so depressing as a London park in a wet fog — and last, up 
a still narrower street until we stopped at the ancient gate- 
way in Cistercian Square where lies the old Hospital of Grey 

Friars. 

We had reached it at last — the very street that the 
Colonel had trod on his daily walks to the city, Pendennis 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

and Clive sometimes beside him, their anguished hearts 
full of an unspoken tenderness. Ethel, too — brave, loyal 
Ethel, who had discovered the letter bequeathing her 
"dear, dear uncle" £500, had passed through this very 
gate eager to carry the news to the Colonel. Pendennis, 
on whose arm she entered, was a happy man that day. 

"As we traversed the court the Poor Brothers were com- 
ing from dinner," he says. "A couple of score, or more, of 
old gentlemen in black gowns issued from the door of their 
refectory and separated over the court, betaking themselves 
to their chambers. Ethel's arm trembled under mine as she 
looked at one and another, expecting to behold her dear 
uncle's familiar features. But he was not among the 
brethren. We went to his chamber, of which the door was 
open; a female attendant was arranging the room; she told 
us Colonel Newcome was out for the day, and thus our 
journey had been in vain." 

Neither did I find him at home. The same old porter 
listened attentively to my request, and, in reply, pointed to 
the house of the Head Master. He had grown younger, of 
course, in all the years, but he wore the same livery — the 
same coat for all I know. And the same old Head Master 
welcomed me, holding my card in his hand, looking at me 
over the top of his glasses — a brave, thoughtful man of 
seventy, perhaps, with a cheery, hearty manner, and one of 
those fresh English complexions that neither age nor climate 
affects. I forget what his name was in the Colonel's time, 
but it is the Reverend Mr. Davies now. 

He led me to a wide, open court, framed about by quaint 
buildings, and covered by clean gravel, over which strolled 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

in twos and threes, some of the Poor Brothers whom Ethel 
had seen in their long, black gowns, most of them bareheaded, 
for it was June, and the sun had come out for a brief spell. 

Here he paused. 

"Before I show you Colonel Newcome's room" — he, 
too, I saw, had fallen into the habit of mixing his personali- 
ties — "I want you to see our great Hall — Guesten Hall. 
I have brought the keys, for this part of Charter House is 
not shown except in special cases." He fitted a great key 
into a massive lock, and pushed in the door, revealing a 
spacious panelled room, with high ceiling, huge fireplace, 
and carved screen shortening one end of its bigness. "Now, 
step a little closer and put your two feet on that plank. 
There, sir! That is the exact spot on which Mr. Thackeray 
once stood when he emptied his pocket of its shillings. I 
was away over by the fireplace, and I edged as close as I 
dared, but he didn't see me. What, sir, would you give 
to-day for a shilling that Colonel Newcome had given you? 
I was a Cistercian, you know, and whenever Mr. Thackeray 
came to visit us he always had his pocket full of shillings. 
When there was not enough he would borrow from any- 
body about him — once he had not a single sixpence left, 
and had to walk home. 

"We always called him 'Colonel' whenever he came, just 
as they used to call Captain Thomas Light, who was really 
the original Colonel Newcome, after his namesake. Yes, 
you shall see the very room and go inside, if old Brother 
Bridger, who occupies it, will let you see it, for he, too, 
is a lover of Thackeray, and once he knows you want to 
make sketches you won't have a bit of trouble." 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

The keys were jangling together again. This time one 
more modest was selected. 

"Now, step in — isn't that a grand banquet hall? Here 
is where the Brothers take their meals, breakfast, dinner, 
and supper, and in this chair," and he pulled it out, 
"is where Mr. Thackeray stood the last time I saw him. 
He had come on Founders' Day to make a speech, and I can 
see him now as he pushed back his chair and stood facing 
the Brothers who stood up in his honour, and I can almost 
hear the tones of his voice; and that, my dear sir, was the 
last time I saw him alive, for he died within the year. And 
now, if you will excuse me, for it is one of my busy days, I'll 
show you the outside of the Colonel's rooms, and the door- 
way with the tablet bearing Mr. Thackeray's name, and 
the tablet bearing Captain Thomas Light's name. There! 
Stoop down and read it — the vines grow rather thick. 
And now, sketch away to your heart's content and make 
yourself quite at home, and if you get into trouble of any 
kind please come to me." 

Thus it was that I opened my easel under the window of 
the very room which I had come three thousand miles to see; 
and, j ust here, I want to say to my readers that in attempting 
to convey to them something of the charm, and more par- 
ticularly something of the reality, of these homes and haunts 
of Mr. Thackeray and his characters, I mean to rely more 
upon my illustrations than upon my text, avoiding, as best I 
can, unnecessary, and, perhaps, misleading descriptions. 

That the sight of a man plumped down in the middle of 
the main path, the most of him on a three-legged stool, the 

6 




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IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

whole of him working away like mad, his fingers smudged 
with charcoal, was not an everyday spectacle, became in- 
stantly apparent. Every Poor Brother, strolling aimlessly 
about, wheeled and bore down upon me. 

"I'm an artist myself," offered an old fellow who must 
have been eighty (if he were a day). "That's a fine me- 
dium, that charcoal, if you don't try to do too much with 
it — we boys used to use it at the academy." 

The others kept silent, watching me closely, and nodding 
their heads as I explained my methods of work. 

"May I ask you where you come from?" whispered an- 
other pensioner, loosening his long black cloak as he stooped 
to get my answer — a retired naval officer I learned after- 
ward. 

"What ! An American ! " he cried, starting back. "Why, 
you don't talk like an American." 

"Neither do you speak like a Welshman, nor a Scotchman, 
nor a London Cockney. We have as many dialects as you," 
I suggested in answer, my voice raised as I glanced toward 
the others, "and yet we are all Englishmen." 

"Yes, all Englishmen; yes, that's true — all Englishmen," 
he kept repeating, as if the idea were entirely novel to him; 
and so the chatter went on, the crowd getting thicker all 
the time, the chapel service now being over, some remain- 
ing standing until my sketch was finished; others, the 
older and more tired or feeble, going into their rooms — 
they all lived in a row of small houses, each one with a 
window and a door opening on the court — for chairs and 
stools on which to rest. 

I had, without my knowing it, been a godsend to a group 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

of people who had heard each other's stories for the hun- 
dredth time, who knew every crook and twinge in each 
other's back and limbs, who had quarrelled and made up, 
and quarrelled again, and who were so set in their ways that 
many a subject was outlawed and strangled by common 
consent at the first utterance. Yet kindly gentlemen 
withal, attached to each other by the common bond of pov- 
erty and suffering, their fortunes wrecked, and they left 
stranded together on the barren coast of life. 

Ethel could not bear to think of her dear uncle, in such 
a place, but the Colonel himself saw only the cheerful sides. 

"'I have found a home, Arthur,' he said to Pendennis. 
'Don't you remember, before I went to India, when we came 
to see the old Grey Friars, and visited Captain Scarsdale in 
his room? — a Poor Brother like me — an old Peninsular 
man. Scarsdale is gone now, sir, and is where "the wicked 
cease from troubling and the weary are at rest"; and I 
thought then, when we saw him — here would be a place for 
an old fellow when his career was over, to hang his sword up ; 
to humble his soul, and to wait thankfully for the end, Arthur. 
My good friend, Lord H., who is a Cistercian like ourselves, 
and has just been appointed a governor, gave me his first 
nomination. Don't be agitated, Arthur, my boy, I am 
very happy. I have good quarters, good food, good light, 
and fire, and good friends; blessed be God! . . . And 
if I wear a black gown, is not that uniform as good as an- 
other? and if we have to go to church every day, at which 
some of the Poor Brothers grumble, I think an old fellow 
can't do better.'" 

Three or four of them, when my work was finished and 

10 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

Evins had carried my traps to the taxi, shook hands with 
me in parting, and one old fellow walked with me as far as 
the gate, his long black Pensioner's cloak flapping about his 
unsteady legs; and yet he bore himself erect, and, as I 
noticed later on, with a certain distinction — that inde- 
scribable quality in a man which only comes with good birth, 
good breeding, and the consciousness of having done some- 
thing worth while. When he had lifted his hat, and had 
begun to retrace his steps, I found myself standing where 
he had left me, my eyes following his every movement, 
until he disappeared in an angle of the court. 

''Yes, sir," said the porter, in answer to my inquiring 
glance, "I don't wonder you want to know — you ain't the 
first has asked me. If you'd been sharp you might have 
got a look at the Victoria Cross he wears on his breast 
underneath his gown. There ain't many like him." 

"Well, why is he here?" I asked. 

"Well, sir, they do say he was too honest to stay out." 



11 



CHAPTER II 

THE COLONEL'S ROOMS 
AT GREY FRIARS 



CHAPTER II 

THE COLONEL'S ROOMS 
AT GREY FRIARS 

I HAD kept for the following day — as one sometimes 
keeps a precious letter, to be opened when alone — the 
rooms in which the old Pensioner lived and died. 
While sketching the court, I had seen the outside walls. 
There, under my eyes, had been the few steps leading to 
the low-pitched door, which he had entered so often. 
The very same window had blinked at me, from under its 
bushy eyebrows of matted vines — the same through which 
he had peered when waiting to catch a glimpse of Ethel or 
Clive. Nothing could have been more convincing, and 
yet, there, too, all the time staring me in the face, had 
been the disturbing tablet, declaring that the whole legend 
was a farce and a sham. That there was no Colonel New- 
come — never had been any. That one, Thomas Light, a 
Captain in His Majesty's service, was the simon-pure and 
only original Colonel inhabiting that room, as could be 
proved not only by the records of the Charter House, men- 
daciously labelled and libelled by Mr. Thackeray as Grey 
Friars, but also by His Majesty's Army Register, in which 

15 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

the full name, title, and services of this distinguished military 
gentleman were duly set forth. 

But I would have none of it. 

I had seen too many tablets in my time, laudatory and 
otherwise — some of most disreputable persons — to be 
swerved from my convictions, and so the next morning I left 
my chauffeur, Evins (now my right-hand man), outside the 
gate with instructions to call for me in the late afternoon, 
and made my way along the open court to the rooms of 
Colonel Thomas Newcome. 

Above the white, well-scoured steps, and just inside the 
doorway, seen in the sketch, there was another tablet of 
brass — a real one — giving the date of Mr. Thackeray's 
visits; and then, sharp to the left, a narrow, dark hall. I 
fumbled for a knocker or a bell, and, finding none rapped 
gently, and I must confess, rather timidly — an apologetic 
knock, as if to say, "impudent is no name for me, but please 
don't slam the door in my face until you hear me out." 

"Come in," called a cheery voice, and I pushed in the 
door. 

"I am making a series of drawings of Mr. Thackeray's 
haunts," I began, to a short, full-bodied man in silhouette 
against a window, through which the sun poured, lighting 
up the desk at which he sat and making an aureole of his 
gray hair, "and I thought you might be good enough to 
let me come some time when it would not disturb you, 
and " 

"Let you come!" He was on his feet in an instant, with 
both hands extended. "Of course you can come, and this 
very minute! If you had waited ten more I should have 

16 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

been gone — stop until I get my hat and cane. Stay here 
just as long as you please; I shan't be back until near five, 
when we will have tea — here's the key; hang it on the nail 
outside when you have finished ; and if a tall, lanky, hungry- 
looking boy raps, you can let him in — he's my nephew — 
and tell him the jam's all out — so there; and now, good- 
bye." 

"Hold on!" I cried. "Let me get my breath. Why?" 

"Why what?" 

"Why have you taken me in this way? I can't possibly 
understand how you could " 

"You don't have to understand. Thirty years ago, when 
I was a young man, I went to the States and rang the door- 
bell of a man in Newark, New Jersey, to whom I had a 
letter. He was father and mother and brother to me dur- 
ing the four years I spent in your country, and since that 
time I have never let an American pass my door, or enter it, 
without wanting to give him half of everything I had. I 
watched you from my window all yesterday morning, and 
after you had gone and I found out where you came from I 
was so disappointed I couldn't get to sleep. Don't forget 
about the jam, and be sure you're here for tea," and he 
slammed the door behind him. 

To be shut up alone in a room belonging to a friend whom 
you have not seen for years, and whose quarters you have 
entered for the first time, is a queer experience. To realize 
that within its walls he himself had died some fifty years 
ago, and in the very bed at which you are looking, and 
that every other thing in the place is practically as he left 
it, adds a touch of the uncanny. 

19 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

The same fireplace, too, "with a brisk fire crackling on 
the hearth; a little tea table laid out, a Bible and spectacles 

by the side of it, and over the mantelpiece a drawing " 

all just as Ethel saw it. "She looked at the pictures of 
Clive and his boy; the two sabres crossed over the mantel- 
piece, the Bible laid on the table, by the old latticed window. 
She walked slowly up to the humble bed, and sat down on a 
chair near it. No doubt her heart prayed for him who slept 
there; she turned round where his black Pensioner's cloak 
was hanging on the wall, and lifted up the homely garment, 
and kissed it." 

I had all this in my mind as I made a careful inventory 
of the appointments and furniture. Yes! Everything 
was the same, except the two sabres, and, perhaps, even 
these were tucked away in the corner by the big wardrobe 
in the little bedroom beyond; and Clive's portrait, which 
may also have been spirited away, and some of the earlier 
Bridgers put in its place. 

But the queer easy chair was there, and so was the 

Pensioner's old black cloak, and on the same hook, no 

doubt, there by the washstand. That she had lifted up the 

homely garment and kissed it was easy to understand. I 

confess I felt something like that myself, as the spell of the 

place took possession of me. Soon the pictures I loved were 

flashed on my memory — not only the one I had seen in the 

Library when a boy, but the many others with which 

the master has enriched our lives. Clearest of all, because 

dearest, shone the tall, slim man with the pale, sad face, 

who, in this very room, had answered, " Adsum." 

As I worked on I relived that scene of his closing hours, 

20 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

the friends who had been with him stealing into the room, 
and grouping themselves around me. 

"Bayham opened the door . . . and came toward 
me with a finger on his lip, and a sad, sad countenance. 
. . . He closed the door gently behind him, and led me 
into the court. 'Clive is with him, and Miss Newcome. 
He is very ill. He does not know them,' said Bayham, 
with a sob. 'He calls out for both of them: they are sit- 
ting there, and he does not know them.' . . . 

"Sometime afterward Ethel came in with a scared face 
to our pale group. 'He is calling for you again, dear lady,' 
she said, going up to Mme. de Florae, who was still kneel- 
ing; 'and just now he said he wanted Pendennis to take care 
of his boy. He will not know you.' She hid her tears as 
she spoke. 

"She went into the room where Clive was at the bed's 
foot; the old man within it talked on rapidly for a while; 
then again he would sigh, and be still; once more I heard 
him say hurriedly, 'Take care of him when I'm in India;' 
and then with a heartrending voice he called out, ' Leonore, 
Leonore.' She was kneeling by his side now. The pa- 
tient's voice sank into faint murmurs ; only a moan now and 
then announced that he was not asleep. 

"At the usual evening hour the chapel bell began to toll, 
and Thomas Newcome's hands outside the bed feebly beat 
time. And just as the last bell struck a peculiar sweet 
smile shone over his face, and he lifted up his head a little, 
and quickly said, ' Adsum!' and fell back. It was the word 
we used at school, and when names were called: and lo! 
he, whose heart was as that of a little child, had an- 

21 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

swered to his name, and stood in the presence of the 
Master." 

The silence became profound; broken only by the scratch- 
ing of my coal on my canvas — a weird, uncanny stillness 
— the kind that a child fears when shut up alone in a bare 
room. Now and then I caught myself listening for the toll 
of the chapel bell; more than once I craned my head in the 
effort to see around the jamb of the wide dividing door 
hiding the bed on which he breathed his last. 

About four o'clock there came a loud knock. I had the 
story of the jam all ready for the tall, hungry nephew, but 
it was only the postman who left a newspaper addressed to 
the Reverend Wm. I. Bridger — the first time I had learned 
his full name. This I laid on a chair instead of on the desk, 
I being at the moment busy with its outlines, and there 
being enough of detail already on its capacious top. 

At half-past four there came another knock. This time 
it was my host, who cried in a voice that put my ghosts to 
flight, " So glad you stayed — anybody been here? Oh, yes, 
the postman," and he picked up the wrapper. He had 
espied it on its chair halfway across the room. " Small 
place, you see, and I get to know every little thing in it, as 
a prisoner does in a cell. It's my world, you understand. 
Now we'll have tea." 

He went out and came back with a china pot and a plate 
of oatmeal, and I was once more in the world of to-day. 

"We'll have it on this desk. Do you know Mr. Thackeray 
wrote the last chapters of * The Newcomes' on this very desk? 
You remember he had a way of cramming his manuscript 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

in his pocket, and writing anywhere he happened to be — 
at his club, or in some hotel abroad" (I had always believed 
that the novel was finished in Paris, and was glad to be set 
right), "and so it is quite reasonable to suppose that as he 
spent a good many days in this very room with his friend 
Captain Light, he should have brought his manuscript along 
with him. The original, you know, is now in the new Charter 
House Library at Godalming. The Head Master will have 
it shown to you with pleasure; and, by the by, if you don't 
mind listening a moment, I have somewhere in my own 
handwriting an account of these visits of Thackeray to 
Captain Thomas Light, which I compiled from various 
sources, and which I will first read and then give you. 
Oh, here it is," and he reached for a bundle of papers in a 
drawer under the teapot, and wheeling his chair closer to 
the light of the window, cleared his throat and began as 
follows : 

" ' For Col. Newcome — the most memorable character in 
the story — there have been many prototypes suggested ; 
in him, we may take it, Thackeray wished to portray a 
typical simple gentleman, & for this purpose, made up a 
"composite" portrait, of which many notable features seem 
to have been supplied by the character of the Author's step- 
father, Major Carmichael Smythe. ... I knew also 
Captain Light, an old officer of fine profile, & grand " frosty 
pow" who had served Her Majesty & her Royal predeces- 
sors, in an infantry regiment, & had lost his sight (so he told 
us), from the glare of the rock of Gibralter. Blindness had 
brought him to seek the shelter of Thomas Sutton's Hos- 

23 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

pital (1), where he lived, with the respect of old & young 
(2), tended lovingly through all the hours of daylight by his 
Daughter, Miss Light, who retired to some lodging hard by, 

when bed-time came 

"'To the quarters of this good old gentleman, I led 
Thackeray, & after knocking, I entered, & remember saying 
" How do you do, Miss Light? I have brought Mr. Thack- 
eray, the Author, to see you & the Captain "... blush- 
ing to the roots of my hair . . . Thackeray then sat 
down & talked, very pleasantly, with the old Captain — 
ever & anon lapsing into reverie, when the "Colonel" and 
"Ethel," we may be sure, took their places with him — and 
then rousing himself to talk courteously again. . . . 
When the fact became known that Col. Newcome was to 
be a "Codd" (3), & that Thackeray had been making a 
"study" for his character, it may be that there was a shade 
of jealousy in Codd-land. My friend Codd Larky (4) told 
me, that I had taken him to the wrong man; & that he 
should have gone to Captain Nicholson, an old Guardsman 
. . . but I did not know him.'" 

"And here is another," continued Doctor Bridger, "which 
I copied from the inscription on the tablet outside: 

"'In this room lived Captain 
Thomas Light whom 
Thackeray visited 
when writing the last 
Chapters of "The Newcomes." 
— " 'From an inscription under my window. 

«"Wm. J. B. 
" ' House No. 16; Room No. 70.' 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

"And here is yet another — such pitiful things occur here 
among our Brothers. Sometimes I write them down and file 
them away. Perhaps some day they will be found by some 
of my successors, and add to the history of our home. 
Listen to this; I will read it if you don't mind: 

'"Pathetic circumstances attach to the death of Dr. B., 
one of the Brethren of Charter House, London, which took 
place on Tuesday evening. For months past Dr., who was 
over eighty, had been in failing health, but his work in 
connection with the invention of an electric lamp for mines, 
on which he had been engaged for many years, had buoyed 
him up. The ultimate failure of his plans greatly depressed 
him, and he gradually sank and died in his rooms in Charter 
House. 

'"On Saturday he received a letter from the Patent Office, 
informing him that his application for the taking out of a 
Patent had been approved, but he remarked, " It is too late." 

"No, take it along with you— I make them in hectograph 
so my friends can each have a copy." 

And so, with the oatmeal eaten — there had been enough 
for two, the nephew not having put in an appearance — 
and the tea drank, I left my genial host, whose reverence 
for the Colonel was like my own, promising to come again 
in the morning when he would show me over Washhouse 
Court, where the Colonel often walked; through the cloister, 
where Mr. Thackeray's and John Leech's tablets were to be 
seen high on the white walls, and into the chapel, where 
Thackeray prayed as a boy, and where his greatest and best 
beloved creation prayed both as boy and man. 

25 



CHAPTER III 

WHERE THE COLONEL WALKED 
AND PRAYED 



M 



CHAPTER III 

WHERE THE COLONEL WALKED 
AND PRAYED 

"Y GUIDE, the Colonel's brother Pensioner, was 
waiting for me the next morning when I pushed 
open his door. He had taken his cloak from its 
hook, and was slipping it over his shoulders. 

"We always wear our gowns when we walk about the 
courts, but if you do not mind," he added, with a laugh, "I 
will leave my hat behind. I like to feel the fresh air on my 
poor scalp," and he tapped the bald spot behind his fore- 
head. "Let us go first through Washhouse Court — this 
way — it is only a step, almost opposite where we stand." 

While he was speaking we had crossed the gravelled space, 
dived under a dark archway, and were standing in a small 
square court that looked like a prison yard, so bare, so 
desolate, and so unclimbable was it. The scarred, soot- 
encrusted walls were pock-marked with the maladies of 
centuries; here and there a small window peered out upon 
the desolate open, with an uncertain, frightened look; some 
high, smooth chimneys rose sheer from the ground without 
a foothold; the roof came down with a sharp slant — that, 
too, was unscalable — while the only exit lay under another 

29 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

archway, with an equally narrow entrance. If, in the old 
days, anybody had been turned loose in this small area, and 
the doors of both archways locked, they might well have 
given up the ghost, so far as their ultimate freedom was 
concerned. 

"Why Washhouse Court?" I asked, conceding in my 
mind the possibility of stringing clotheslines, but in doubt 
about the tubs. 

"Because it is! I have a couple of shirts in there now," 
and he pointed to a framing of low windows and wooden 
doors, level with the rough stone pavement. "The linen 
of our old friend, the Colonel, came here too. We have 
mangles and all sorts of funny machines now, but in his 
days it was just plain elbow-grease, knuckles, and plenty 
of soap. Then it was known as "Laundry Court," and, in 
addition to a washhouse, boasted a brewhouse, a kitchen, 
bakehouse, and fishhouse. Since then as you can see, the 
trowel and chisel of the restorers, have patched up the holes 
that time and neglect have made, but much of the old wall, 
especially that part above the archway, is quite as it 
appeared in 1572 to the Duke of Norfolk the day he was 
arrested in the great Hall, behind which I live, for con- 
spiracy against his Queen." 

By this time we had dived under the archway seen in my 
sketch, passed through still another open space, and found 
ourselves at last in the little ante-chapel leading to the 
chapel itself. 

Again I was on holy ground ! 

Here the Colonel had walked to and from chapel service, 
and in the same black Pensioner's cloak that Ethel had 

30 




WASHHOUSE COURT — GREY FRIARS 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

kissed. Here, too, when the organ had played them out of 
chapel at length, Pendennis, with heavy heart, had strolled 
with him on his way back to his room. "And I take it 
uncommonly kind of you," the Colonel, with flushed, wan 
face, had said, "and I thank God for you, sir. Why, sir, I 
am as happy as the day is long." 

This ante-chapel is but little changed, and, judging from 
the uneven surfaces of the several panes of glass in the queer 
sashes with rounded tops, the windows looking out upon 
the adjoining court, must be the same as those that lighted 
the Colonel's way. Nor can there be any doubt that the 
flooring of stone slabs, marking the graves of the long-ago 
dead, was the very same which had reechoed the sound 
of his footfalls. There was a new tablet, of course, on 
the opposite wall — several of them in fact, one bearing 
the name of the Colonel's creator — and another that of 
John Leech, his dear friend and brother Carthusian — or 
Cistercian, as. Thackeray chooses to call them. And there 
were still others, bearing the names of Sir Henry Havelock, 
John Wesley, Roger Williams (founder of Rhode Island), 
and various distinguished Carthusians, many of which the 
Colonel must have looked on as he walked bareheaded to 
his prayers. 

Morning service was over when we entered, and that cold 
hush, which one sometimes feels on entering an empty 
church, greeted us — not the hush of death, but rather one 
of sleep. Even the effigy of old Thomas Sutton, to whose 
princely munificence the Brothers owe their homes and 
support, appeared to be more asleep than dead these two 
hundred years. And so did the organ, high up above my 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

head ; and the prayer-books lining the ledges of the pews — 
all seemed quietly dozing. 

It has every right to go to sleep if it pleases, this relic 
of the Carthusian Monks, for most of it dates back to 
the middle of the fourteenth century. Since that time 
the north and west walls have been rebuilt, and the open 
arches erected by Thomas Sutton's executors, to make room 
for his remains. As in the Colonel's day, so now: "The 
chapel is lighted, and the Founders' Tomb, with its gro- 
tesque carvings, monsters, heraldries, darkles and shines 
with the most wonderful shadows and lights. There he 
lies, Fundator Noster, in his ruff and gown, awaiting the 
great Examination Day." 

In the pavement near by, there is, among others, the 
gravestone of Thomas Walker, Head Master 1679-1728, who 
had Addison, Steel, and Wesley for his pupils. In the belfry 
above, hangs the great bell, recast in 1631. This tolls the 
curfew at 8 p. m. in winter, and 9 p. m. in summer, the num- 
ber of its strokes corresponding to that of the Brothers 
within the hospital. It was to the strokes of this very bell 
that Thomas Newcome's hand kept time, beating feebly 
outside his bed. 

I was not sorry that just here my friend and guide bade 
me good-bye. He had work to do — a service to hold in a 
small church outside the grounds, so he told me with a 
certain pride in his voice, as if reminding me that he was 
not wholly dependent on the charity of the old fellow whose 
bones were enclosed in the marble tomb. I, too, had work 
to do. I had memories and traditions and scenes out of 
my boyhood days to talk over with myself, and I had a 

34 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

sketch to make — one rather difficult because of its cross 
lights, and because of a big column which stood out clear 
from the gloom of the choir loft and the deep-shadowed 
recess beneath the gallery. 

But even then I was not alone. The chapel was peopled. 
It was Founders' Day once more — Pendennis beside me, 
intent on the ceremonies. 

"Yonder sit forty cherry-cheeked boys, thinking about 
home and holidays to-morrow. Yonder sit some threescore 
old gentlemen pensioners of the hospital, listening to the 
prayers and the psalms. You hear them coughing feebly 
in the twilight — the old reverend black-gowns. . . . 
A plenty of candles lights up this chapel, and this scene of 
age and youth, and early memories, and pompous death. 
How solemn the well-remembered prayers are, here uttered 
again in the place where in childhood we used to hear 
them! . . . 

" ' 23. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: 
and he delighteth in his way. 

" ' 24. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: 
for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand. 

"'25. I have been young, and now am old: yet have I 
not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their 
bread.' 

"As we came to this verse, I chanced to look up from my 
book toward the swarm of black-coated pensioners and 
among them — among them — sat Thomas Newcome. 

"His dear old head was bent down over his prayer-book; 
there was no mistaking him. He wore the black gown of 
the pensioners of the Hospital of Grey Friars. His Order 

37 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

of the Bath was on his breast. He stood there among the 
poor brethren, uttering the responses to the psalm. The 
steps of this good man had been ordered hither by Heaven's 
decree : to this almshouse ! Here it was ordained that a life 
all love, and kindness, and honour should end ! I heard no 
more of prayers, and psalms, and sermon after that. How 
dared I to be in a place of mark, and he yonder among the 
poor? Oh, pardon, you noble soul! I ask forgiveness of 
you for being of a world that has so treated you — you my 
better, you the honest, and gentle, and good ! I thought the 
service would never end, or the organist's voluntaries, or 
the preacher's homily." 

Working away on my sketching stool, transferring the 
"darkles and lights," of the chapel's lines and masses to 
my paper, no wonder that I lost for the time all sense of 
proportion, and confounded fancy with fact. I had always 
known I should meet the Colonel just as I believe I shall 
yet meet Sam Weller and Micawber and Dot Perrybingle, 
and so, when an old brother, in his black gown, stole in 
while I worked and sat down noiselessly in a pew to my 
right, his face buried in his hands as he prayed, I was con- 
vinced that he was none other than my hero, until he 
raised his head and I caught sight of a gray beard. Even 
then I worked on, dallying over my surface, lifting my head 
for confirmation every time I heard a footfall in the ante- 
chapel beyond; forever on the watch for the thin, military 
figure, with the pale, smooth face. 



38 



CHAPTER IV 
SMITHFIELD MARKET 



CHAPTER IV 
SMITHFIELD MARKET 

WE MADE the ascent of Snow Hill," writes Thack- 
eray in "The Newcomes." "We passed by the 
miry pens of Smithfield. We travel through the 
Street of St. John and presently reach the gateway in 
Cistercian Square where lies the old Hospital of Grey 
Friars." 

This is the route Pendennis's cab took from Lincoln's Inn 
Fields, Ethel and he sitting inside, on the way to see Thomas 
Newcome, and this, too, was my own route except that I 
occupied a modern up-to-date taxi, and Evins, my chauf- 
feur, was at the wheel. The "miry pens," filled with the 
cattle of the period, are replaced now by high glass-covered 
sheds under which pass huge wagons drawn by great 
Normandy horses, loaded down with most of the chops, 
breakfast bacon, and roast beef of old England. It was 
raining, as usual, and Evins had backed my moving studio 
under the eaves of a protecting shed. The crowd was so 
dense, and the movement of wheel and hoof so constant, 
that I waited until the greater part of the early morning 
rush was over before commencing my sketch. 

"Do you know this part of London, Evins?" 

41 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

"Not much, sir. We don't get out here often. Round 
the Empire Theatre, or maybe out by St. Johns Wood late 
at night, or Paddington way, or Kensington, but this is new 
to me. I was never to Charter House until I took you there 
three days ago. I been a-reading up about it in a book one 
of my pals has at the garage." 

"One of Mr. Thackeray's?" 

"Yes, I think that was the writer's name — something 
about an officer called Newcome." 

"Do you get a chance to read much?" 

"No, sir — can't say I do — barring the Mirror and 
sometimes the News. I been around though considerable." 

"In England?" 

"No, farther than that." 

"America?" 

"No, I wish I had. I was in Cape Town for a bit." 

"What were you doing there? Driving?" 

"Not all the time, sir. I was laid up for a while — had a 
bad crack on my knee — got a twist in it — not much of a 
knee now," and he tapped it with his closed hand, "especi- 
ally in bad weather — been bothering me all the week." 

"What happened? Thrown off your box?" 

" Not exactly, sir, but it felt like it when they picked me up. 
Then I got a clip on my ear — you can see it, sir, if you look 
— little ragged yet." 

"In the hospital, were you?" 

"Yes, for six weeks or so." 

"What happened then?" 

"Oh, I had served my time and they sent me home." 

"The company you worked for?" 

42 



k 



.iqtgJW*")'' 






K - 





*:-Z^ 




jfi j(«iiCi 


D, 


1 "Jjg-V^» — «« 






i f 


1! 


1 : ^-N 


I 

1 


•if 


V 



^ 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

"No, the Head Surgeon. There wasn't many of my 
company left." 

A light began to dawn upon me. I took another look at 
his face, and the way his head, with the ragged ear, sat on 
his broad shoulders, and the clear, steady gaze with which he 
regarded me. 

"Do you mean you were in the army, Evins?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"During the Boer War?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"And where did you get that crack?" 

"At Spion Kop, sir. I had another through my sleeve 
that burned the skin off me arm, but it didn't amount to 
anything. It was pretty warm for us, sir, for a while. 
Shall I back, sir? The rain's clearin' up a bit, and there's 
only a few of the wagons left. Maybe we can get one of 
them to stand still." 

I did not answer for some minutes. "England is full of 
just such men," I said to myself; "have to use a corkscrew 
to get anything out of them." I have known dozens just 
like him. The last thing any one of them wants to talk 
about is the part he played in some drama in which every 
man was a hero — except in his own opinion. 

My chaffeur had loomed up into another and a more dis- 
tinct personality — one that inspired a certain deference. 
Here was I, riding around London with a fellow who opened 
the door of my vehicle like a lackey, touched his hat when I 
gave him an order, brought me beer: and sandwiches when 
I was hungry, sharpened my charcoals when I was hurried, 
and who ten years ago had been dragged off the worst battle- 

45 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

field of the war with the ravellings of three bullets clinging 
to his person. I soon found myself under considerable 
restraint in not shaking hands with him, and I would have 
done so had not a certain look in his eyes warned me that, 
for the time being at least, he was my servant, and that 
each one of us must keep his own place. 

This same look was in his eye when I finished my sketch 
of the Market, and rose. It rather checked my enthusiasm, 
and I merely said, "Lucky you got out with a whole skin," 
and bade him drive on to St. Bartholomew's the Great. 

As we approached its site from around the wide Square, 
my eye ran along the bare wall of a great building, commer- 
cial or otherwise, until it rested on a small archway — the 
only entrance from this side to the church itself. Leaving 
the taxi on the curb, we dodged under its arch, skirted a 
narrow pavement, flanked by a damp, mouldy graveyard, 
frowned on by a row of dingy, soot-begrimed houses; 
then crossing a little dip in the sidewalk we made our 
way through the small swinging doors, into the narrow 
vestibule, and so on into the church. 

If Mr. Thackeray or any one of his characters had aught 
to do with St. Bartholomew's the Great, there is nothing I 
can find in a diligent search through his published books 
to prove it. And yet, it is hardly to be supposed that he 
could have been unconscious of its dignity and beauty even 
when he was a boy at Grey Friars School; and later on, 
when he would revisit his old haunts on Founders' Day, 
reviving his early memories of the places round about its 
quiet courts. Nor was it too far away from those quiet 

46 




^00^^/0^ 






■ •. - ...-• . . . 






IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

courts themselves for Thomas Newcome not to have made 
the church a resting place when he took his morning walks 
abroad. 

I choose to think so at any rate. But if these excuses do 
not suffice, then I will make a clean breast of it — it was be- 
cause I could not resist its beauty. 

Other churches have I studied in my wanderings; many 
and various cathedrals, basilicas and mosques have de- 
lighted me. I know, too, the colour and the value of tapes- 
try and rich hangings, of mosaics, porphyry and verd 
antiques; of fluted alabaster and the delicate tracery of the 
arabesque; but the velvety quality of London soot when 
applied to the rough surfaces of rudely chiselled stone, 
and the soft loveliness gained by grime and smoke, came 
to me as a revelation. 

This rich black which, like a tropical fungus, grows and 
spreads through its interior, hiding under its soft, caressing 
touch the rough angles and insistent edges of the Norman, is 
what the bloom is to the grape; what the dark purpling is to 
the plum, mellowing from sight the brilliancy of the under 
skin. And there are wide coverings of it, too, as if some 
master decorator had wielded a great coal, and, at one 
sweep of his hand, had rubbed its glorious black into every 
crevice, crack, and cranny of wall, column, and arch. 

Certain it is that no other medium than the one I have 
used could give any idea of its charm. Neither oil, 
water-colour nor pastel will transmit it — no, nor the dry 
point or bitten plate. The soot of centuries, the fogs of 
countless Novembers, the smoke of a thousand firesides, 
were the pigments which the Master Painter set upon his 

49 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

palette in this task of giving us one exquisitely beautiful 
interior wholly in black and white. As I worked on I 
caught Evins pausing now and then in his silent tiptoeing 
about its aisles, fingering the walls here and there, as if 
wondering whether its ancient smudge would come off. 

"Like an old chimney, ain't it, sir?" he remarked, when 
he had resumed his place beside me. "Looks as if they 
had built a fire in here somewhars, and stopped up the flue. 
Rum old place, anyway; I never see it afore. Pretty old, 
ain't it, sir?" 

I nodded assent and worked on, giving him in a staccato 
form (for I cannot talk when I am at work) such informa- 
tion from various guide books telling of the interior of the 
famous church as I had gleaned the night before. 

One paragraph at the bottom of a page came to my mind, 
upon which I dilated with confidence, our ears at the mo- 
ment being filled with the sound of an anvil and hammer, 
reverberating through an open door. The noise came from 
a shop which seemed to be part and parcel of the edifice 
itself — was a part, so the sexton, or clerk, to whom I ap- 
pealed told me in passing, adding that it had always been a 
blacksmith shop, and was still, and would continue to be 
until the end of time. Indeed, its attempted removal had 
so seriously endangered the repairs, completed some fifty 
years before, that the authorities had been compelled to let 
the shop stay — a confirmation which established me at once 
as an oracle in my chauffeur's mind. 

Evins drank it all in, putting questions now and then, 
most of which, being outside my line of research, brought 
me up standing, the very obliging and learned clerk having 

50 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

gone to his luncheon. I could, of course, have invented an 
answer, and indulged in glittering generalties, which would 
have satisfied him. I could have parried the questions; but 
I did none of these things. I simply threw up my hands. 
It seemed the only honest way out. It might not have 
appeared to me in that light the day before, but it did now. 
Yesterday I was driving around with just a plain chauffeur, 
number something or other, in a W. & G. taxi. To-day I 
was the guest, or comrade, or companion, of a man who 
would have been wearing the D. S. 0. had a reporter come 
along at the right moment and spelt his name correctly 
in the despatches — a man, too, who thought so little of 
the incident that I had to use a pair of nippers and a force 
pump to extract from him the slightest detail regarding the 
occurrence. 

It was now three o'clock, and yet my sketch was still 
unfinished ; for church architecture must be drawn — not 
guessed at. 

The taxi, of course, required neither food or water, but 
the chauffeur might. 

"Getting hungry, Evins?" 

" Well, yes, a little peckish, sir. I was up at six — but it 
don't matter; keep on — I can stand it if you can." 

"I would send you for some sandwiches and a couple of 
bottles of beer if it wasn't a church — but of course " 

"No, of course not, sir. It's bad luck to picnic on a 
tomb." 

"And then again, Evins, I've got a better idea. I'll be 
through in half an hour, and then we'll drive down Holborn, 
near Staple Inn, and get a chop and a mug apiece." 

51 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

"Thank you, sir," and he touched his hat. 

All of this happened, even to a second mug apiece, the 
last accompanied by my cigar case which 1 sent to his 
table by the waiter with a duplicate of the afternoon paper 
I was reading. 

And so a sort of comradeship was established between us 
— one that, as the days went by, grew closer and more 
human. 



52 



CHAPTER V 
STAPLE INN 



CHAPTER V 
STAPLE INN 

THE wet streets and sidewalks of London, glistening 
under its silver-gray sky, little rivulets of quick- 
silver escaping everywhere, are always a delight to 
me. When with these I get a background of — and I al- 
ways do — flat masses of quaint buildings, all detail lost 
in the haze of mist and smoke, my delight rises to enthu- 
siasm. Nowhere else in the world are the "values" so 
marvellously preserved. You start your foreground — 
say a figure, or umbrella, or a cab — with a stroke of jet 
black, and the perspective instantly fades into grays of 
steeple, dome or roof, so delicate and vapoury that there is 
hardly a shade of difference between earth and sky. 

And charcoal is again the one only medium which will 
express it. Charcoal is the unhampered, the free, the per- 
sonal, the individual medium. No water, no oil, no palette, 
no squeezing of tubes, nor mixing of tints; no scraping, 
scumbling, or other dilatory and exasperating necessities. 
Just a piece of coal, the size of a small pocket pencil, held 
flat between the thumb and forefinger, a sheet of paper, and 
then "let go." Yes, one thing more — care must be taken 
to have this thumb and forefinger fastened to a sure, know- 

55 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

ing and fearless hand, worked by an arm which plays easily 
and loosely in a ball-socket set firmly near your backbone. 
To carry out the metaphor, the steam of your enthusiasm, 
kept in working order by the safety-valve of your experience, 
and regulated by the ball-governor of your art knowledge — 
such as composition drawing, mass and light and shade 
— is then turned on. 

Now you can "let go," and in the fullest sense, or you 
will never arrive. My own experience has taught me that 
if an outdoor charcoal sketch, covering and containing 
all a man can see — and he should neither record nor ex- 
plain anything more — is not completely finished in three 
hours, it can never be finished by the same man in three 
days or three years. 

And London is the best place I know for practising the 
art — especially if it be raining, and there was no question 
that it was raining on this particular morning in Holborn, 
when Evins backed his taxi into a position from which I 
could get the old Staple Inn pitched forward against a 
luminous gray sky, its gables reflected in a stream of silver, 
the sidewalk and broad road thronged with pedestrians 
picking their way amidst an endless procession of wheeled 
traffic. 

The Inn itself I had sketched the year before — that is 
the garden part of it, especially the row of time-blackened 
buildings holding the rooms where Mr. Grewgious in "Ed- 
win Drood" had his office. Its staggering street front was, 
however, new to my coal. 

St. Bartholomew's Church might have been debatable 
ground, but here I am sure of my facts. Opposite Staple 

56 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

Inn stands, or did stand but a few years ago, the famous 
old Furnivals Inn, where Dickens had his quarters, and 
where he wrote the opening chapters of "Pickwick." Hither 
Thackeray betook himself one fine morning with a port- 
folio of sketches under his arm. He had read the first 
numbers of that immortal book, and as he was convinced 
he would never amount to anything as an author himself, 
he had come to beg of Dickens the chance to earn an honest 
penny as an illustrator. Mr. Dickens was just entering 
into that great fame as a writer of fiction which has never 
dimmed from that time. The young artist had scarcely 
attempted literature, and had still to tread the paths of 
obscurity. . . . Some years later, when both men 
were famous, Thackeray told the story at a dinner of the 
Royal Academy at which Mr. Dickens was present. 

"I can remember when Mr. Dickens was a very young 
man, and had commenced delighting the world with some 
charming humorous works in covers, which were coloured 
light green and came out once a month, that this young 
man wanted an artist to illustrate his writings ; and I recol- 
lect walking up to his chambers in Furnival's Inn, with two 
or three drawings in my hand, which, strange to say, he did 
not find suitable. But for the unfortunate blight which 
came over my artistical existence, it would have been my 
pride and my pleasure to have endeavoured one day to find 
a place on these walls for one of my performances." 

It was not until a year had passed that Thackeray be- 
gan seriously to devote himself to literary labour; and his 
articles, published over a now. de plume, contain the best 
evidences that he felt no shadow of ill-will for a rejec- 

57 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

tion which he always good-humouredly alluded to as "Mr. 
Pickwick's lucky escape." 

As to the Inn itself, we learn that the front, shown in my 
sketch, dates from the latter part of the sixteenth century; 
and the outer buildings and courtyard from between 
1729-59. That it used to be known as "le Stapled Halle," 
and was, in its origin, the house of a guild in some way 
responsible for the collection of the duties on wool — the 
data ending with the announcement that in one of the top 
rooms — quite under the roof in fact — Dr. Johnson wrote 
"Rasselas." 

In 1884 the freehold was sold, and the insurance com- 
pany across the way took possession, and I am inclined to 
think with a certain sense of their responsibilities. Per- 
haps their conscience had begun to smite them after they 
had wiped dear old Furnival's Inn off the planet, erecting 
in its stead a modern combination of brick, stone, and slate. 
For, when they looked Staple Inn over, they then and 
there, God bless them! resolved to prop it up as best they 
could, to keep it from sprawling its full length on the side- 
walk. And a very creditable restoration it is. 

This, let me say, applies only to the partly modernized 
street front. Once inside the gateway, and back you go 
hundreds of years, three hundred I am sure in the second 
court where Mr. Grewgious earned his bread — or tried to — 
in some chambers over the main door of a dull building, 
mouldy with grime, its windows blinking in the gloom of the 
desolate garden, set out with seats, and miserable, droopy, 
disheartened trees which stand aimlessly about. A queer 
gate leads out somewhere into the unknown (to me) sug- 

58 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

gesting a short cut to somewhere else. I can well believe 
that the snubbed and humiliated artist, after such a rebuff, 
crossed the street to avoid the gaze of passersby, dodging 
into this same court, where he wandered about in its grave- 
yard silence trying to pull himself together; and so on, 
and out the rear gate to his lodgings in Great Coram Street, 
thoroughly convinced that life for him was a failure, and 
that neither literature nor art (which last he loved best) 
could support him. 

Something which might have been as disheartening 
happened to me too at Staple Inn. 

/ came very near being locked up. 

Before getting ready to sketch in the streets of any 
city, I invariably look up the constituted authorities. This 
habit of mine has given me the freedom of Constantinople, 
Moscow, and Sofia — three cities where even the sight of a 
white umbrella is enough to call out the guard. I haven't 
the space to tell about it here, but it would be mighty in- 
teresting reading if I had. 

This particular morning I. began by sending Evins, with 
my compliments, and visiting card — a wonderful thing is 
a visiting card to people who have never seen one, and 
policemen are seldom society men — with the request that 
he would "step lively," as I was beginning work and wanted 
to know just where his Bobby ship would permit me to place 
my taxi. 

"Anywhere ye like, sir — big wide street — and ye won't 
be in the way," and with a wave of his hand he bit off the 
end of the cigar that, in parting, I had handed him, and 
kept on up the street. 

61 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

There are a lot of people in Holborn who have nothing to 
do. This was their "star" morning, and before my easel 
was up, those whose heads were not jammed in the side 
windows, were crawling over the wheels and top. Evins's 
efforts to scrape most of them off resulted in considerable 
back-talk in strong Cockney dialect, interspersed with 
flashes of profanity. At this another Bobby appeared, this 
time in the offing, a large, well-set up Bobby, with a waist- 
line that was wider than his shoulders. 

"Ye can't stop there," I heard him call, and out went the 
flat of his hand in protest. The upheld fist of a policeman 
we know about — and also the outstretched finger — one 
means fight and the other "now will you be good," but the 
open hand held flat, is the barricade of the Commune behind 
which he proposes to fight to the death. 

"Ask the officer to kindly come to the taxi," I called 
through the window — as I reached for my cigar case — 
the rain was coming down in sheets. 

"He says he won't, and he'll summons both of us if we 
don't move on," Evins shouted back. 

I got out. 

"Officer," I began, giving him the same military salute 
I always accord to potentates and kings, "I have already 
got permission from one of your men who " 

"Well, ye can't git none from me. I tell ye to move on; 
take an act of Parliament to let ye keep ;a cab there blocking 
up the street." 

"But I " 

"Well, there ain't no buts; you just " 

Evins sidled up. He had a bad glint in his eye, and the 

62 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

line of his mouth had so straightened that it looked like a 
healed sabre cut. 

"There ain't none of your men that ain't been obliging 
to the gentleman since we been to work (I inwardly thanked 
him for that), and I don't see why you should put " 

"Well, it ain't for you to see. I get my orders — are 
ye going to move, or shall I " 

"Hold on, Evins!" I said. These fellows with balls in 
their legs often get mixed as to whom they are fighting; 
and then again, a London Bobby is backed by the whole 
British Empire. "Just one moment, officer; where is your 
nearest police station?" 

"What's that got to do with it?" He had evidently 
begun to take my measure, for the sentence was finished in 
a tone bordering on respectful toleration. 

"Nothing to you perhaps, but a lot to me. You are the 
first policeman in all London who has not been particularly 
polite. If my cab is in the wrong place I'll move it some- 
where else — anywhere you say. If you can't give me this 
permission, I'll find somebody who will. Where will I go?" 

To tell the truth, with all my bravado I was shaking in my 
shoes. But I knew I had to back up Evins in some way 
— comrades on the same battlefield, so to speak — or I'd 
lose my chauffeur's respect, and that would be worse than 
being locked up. 

"Down by the Viaduct — and much good will it do ye." 

" I know it, sir," said Evins behind his hand. " I was run 
in there myself once for speedin'." 

Into the taxi again, the crowd pressing closer, wondering 
what it was all about; a whirl through streaming streets, 

63 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

and we pulled up in front of the customary overhead lan- 
tern. 

Two policemen guarded the door. 

"Is the inspector in?" 

"Who wants him?" 

"Take him this card, and say that a gentleman from New 
York wants to see him at once." 

I could put on all the airs I happened to have about me 
now — at least until I got inside. 

"This way, sir." The "sir" was encouraging. I was 
not to be thrown out anyway — that is, not neck and heels. 

A short, stockily built man of fifty, in a loose blue jacket, 
and whose calm eyes had uncovered every act of my life 
in the first glance, advanced to meet me, my card in his 
hand. 

"What is it?"— not "Who have I the honour?" or 
"What can I do for you?" but just "What is it?" 

I fell at once into telegraphic abbreviation. 

"First officer — Holborn — permitted me to sketch old 
Staple Inn from taxi — second officer drove me away — 
said blocking up street — came to you in consequence." 

Another exact caliper gaze. He was conning over my 
ancestry now, trying to find out whether any of them were 
hanged. 
. "Where was your taxi?" 

"Curb of street below Inn." 

"The widest part?" 

I nodded. 

"Any crowd?" 

"Yes, but rain kept them moving." 

64 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

"Ugh!" The sound of this word cannot be given with 
any vowels or consonants with which I am familiar. As 
near as I could judge it meant confidence in my statements, 
qualified disgust at the stand taken by the second Bobby, 
and a desire to see me through. 

"Have you any complaint to make of the officer?" 

"No. He was only doing his duty — as he saw it." 

The eye relaxed its grip. He was now convinced of the 
unblemished life of my ancestors — my tactful reply did 
the business. 

He strode to the telephone. 

Buzz — buzz. 

More buzz, buzz — a distant buzzing — up Holborn way, 
I afterward discovered. 

". . . Well, that's pretty wide there." 

Buzz, Buzz. 

"Yes." 

Then he turned to me. "You can go back. The officer 
has his instructions." 

That was a great shout which went up from the crowd 
when Evins, with his face one broad, illimitable smile, 
whirled our cab into place again! 

"Got square with that Yarmouth bloater," was all he 
said. 



65 



CHAPTER VI 
NO. 36 ONSLOW SQUARE 



CHAPTER VI 
NO. 36 ONSLOW SQUARE 

I WISH I could have seen inside, for here it was that 
Thackeray lived from 1853 to 1861. "The den in 
which he wrote," says Mr. Crowe, "was very cheerful; 
its windows commanded a view of the old avenue of elm 
trees. The walls were decked with wonderful water- 
colour scenes by his favourite, Mr. Bennet, and quite in a 
central place was the beautiful mezzotint of Sir Joshua's 
'Little Girl in the Snow,' a playful terrier and robin red- 
breast as her companions. As a change he would at times 
prefer the Sunflower room and dictate while lounging on an 
ottoman — too often battling with pain in later days. The 
little bronze statuette of George IV on the mantelpiece had 
the look of an ironical genius loci, when the work of ham- 
mering into the lectures of the Four Georges was on the 
anvil." 

I could only look up at the windows, as many another 
pilgrim has done. But my imagination, at least, was not 
barred an entrance by their protective panes. On the other 
side of them the great man had written the closing chapters 
of "The Newcomes," all of "The Virginians," part of 
"Philip," "The Roundabout Papers," and "Four Georges." 

69 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

His private secretary, Mr. James Hodder, has told us how 
the work was done : behind these very sashes. 

"Duty called me to his bedchamber every morning, and 
as a general rule I found him up and ready to begin work, 
though he was sometimes in doubt and difficulty as to 
whether he should commence sitting, or standing, or walk- 
ing, or lying down. Often he would light a cigar, and, after 
pacing the room for a few minutes, would put the unsmoked 
remnant on the mantelpiece and resume his work with in- 
creased cheerfulness, as if he gathered fresh inspiration 
from the gentle odours of the sublime tobacco." 

It is not very agreeable — this standing outside looking 
up at the windows of somebody you have loved, watching 
for a shadow T on a curtain, or the round of a head framed in a 
pane of glass. 

The street is a narrow one — perhaps the width of two 
taxis, and when Evins brought his own opposite No. 36, 
I was much too near for any satisfactory composition. 
There was, however, a wonderful old Square opposite, filled 
with trees, grass, perambulators, nursemaids, lovely English 
children — the loveliest the world over, and the rosiest and 
best-behaved — besides no end of gravelled walks spat- 
tered with shadows, for the weather had cleared and the sun 
had come out and was shining away for all it was worth. 
And there was an iron fence — a tall, ugly, forbidding fence, 
armed with bayonets interspersed with grim-looking gates, 
that shut to with a sudden snap as if lying in wait for your 
finger, and could only be opened by keys belonging to the 
owners of the rows of houses flanking its four sides. A 
drawing made from the sidewalk facing the iron fence would 

70 




D 

a 






IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

show only the front steps, one window, the door, and per- 
haps the bronze tablet at the left, which the London Society 
has placed there. I must get into the Square and utilize 
the trees and fence as a foreground, if my sketch was to 
convey any idea of this most delightful of Thackeray's later 
homes. 

So I rang the door bell — the same, no doubt, Mr. Thack- 
eray had handled hundreds of times, for there have been 
few changes since he left it fifty years ago — nothing but a 
touch of paint, perhaps, and the usual repairs. 

In answer a head was thrust up from the area. 

"My lady 'as gone to Hascot, sir — nobody else at 
'ome." 

"Gould I get the key of the Square?" etc., and then there 
followed the customary statement — one which I knew 
now by rote — of my nationality, profession, purpose, and 
blameless character. 

No, she didn't know where her lady kept the key. The 
gardener who worked in the Square, and who could be found 
in the church at the end of the street — I could see it right 
before me — had a key — I might get it "off 'im." 

I knew all about the church. Mr. Thackeray's daughter, 
Lady Ritchie, to whom he dictated much of "The New- 
comes," had described it clearly in one of her introductions 
to her father's published works. The volume was then in 
my cabc I had brought it along to make sure of the 
identical house in which he had lived. 

"Our old house was the fourth," she says, "counting the 
end house from the corner by the church in Onslow Square, 
the church being on the left hand, and the avenue of old 

73 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

trees running in front of our drawing-room windows. I used 
to look up from the avenue and see my father's head bending 
over his work in the study window, which was over the 
drawing-room." 

Neither the gardener nor the sexton materialized under 
Evins's still hunt, and I rang the bell of the door one house 
below. 

This time Jeames Yellowplush appeared. 

"Notat'ome" (all one word); "me Leddy 'as gone to 
Hascot." 

I was feeling in my pocket among my loose shillings for 
half a crown, in order to continue the conversation prop- 
erly when the first housemaid's head was again thrust 
out of the areaway of No. 36. I discovered later that Evins 
had been indulging in a highly coloured description of my 
morals and attainments. 

"The cook 'as found it, sir. Bring it back, please, when 
you are through." 

"Most estimable person, Evins," I said, diving into my 
open pocket — when is it ever closed abroad! "Give her 
this," and I inserted the key and swung back the gate. 

I had now a foreground of tree-trunks, clumps of bushes, 
a flat pavement splashed with shadows, and behind and 
through the iron bars of the ugly, armed-to-the-teeth fence 
— especially through the wide opening made by the gate — 
a view of all of the house frontways, and most of it down 
and up as far as the second story. 

But even a closed and locked public park lacks privacy 
when you are working under a white umbrella. The 
"prams" began to gather, slowly and solemnly as a flock 

74 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

of turkeys gather — a good simile this, if you have ever 
seen turkeys parade — pushed by the comely nursemaids in 
caps with wide strings that nigh swept the ground, little 
pink heads nestling inside, some asleep, some not — most 
of them not. Stiff-starched-frocked-children came next. 
Some four years old, some five — among them a boy of six — 
one of those bare-headed, bare-legged, rosy-cheeked, lovable, 
huggable, and spankable little beggars that you want to take 
in your arms at sight. 

He squared himself as he looked on, his wee chubby hands 
hooked behind his plump back — and remarked gravely : 

"My word, but that's like it!" 

Had he been seventy, standing with his back to a fire 
in a London Club, he could not have been more authorita- 
tive or self-possessed. 

"Don't bother the gentleman," this from Maria Jane — 
her name must have been Maria Jane. 

"He isn't bothering me; come around on the other side so 
you can see how I do it." 

"You come on Marster ' Arry, or I'll " 

"Where does he live?" I interrupted, addressing the 
flowing streamers. 

"'Cross the way, sir." 

"Leave the little fellow with me — I'll take care of 
him." 

Evins now joined us; he had already backed the taxi out 
of the line of my perspective, and upon seeing the crowd had 
sidled up to lend a hand. 

The boy took him in with a single glance. 

"I wouldn't go round in one of those motor cars," he said, 

75 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

"if I were you, that does nothing but eat up the tuppences 
whether you ride or not — you can hear it now. First 
thing you know it's ten bob." 

"Harry! come here this minute!" rang out a voice from 
a second story-window opposite. 

The little fellow looked up, and a shadow fell across his 
face. 

"I'll have to cut it. Nurse don't count, and half the 
time I don't mind, but that's my aunt" — his voice ris- 
ing in emphasis — "Good-bye; thanks awfully," and he 
was gone. 

He was the grandson, no doubt, of one of those little 
fellows whom Thackeray loved to pat on the head. In- 
stantly my memory went back to Charles Dickens's trib- 
ute. 

"He had a particular delight in boys," he says, "and an 
excellent way with them. I remember his once asking me, 
with fantastic gravity, when he had been to Eton where my 
eldest son then was, whether I felt as he did in regard to 
never seeing a boy without wanting instantly to give him 
a sovereign? I thought of this when I looked down into 
his grave after he was laid there, for I looked down into it 
over the shoulders of a boy to whom he had been kind." 

For the differences between the two great authors had 
been healed a short time before Thackeray's death. They 
had not spoken for some years, because of a criticism on 
Mr. Thackeray made by Mr. Edmund Yates, which Mr. 
Thackeray resented, the Garrick Club sustaining him. The 
whole sad correspondence is before me as I write. All of 
his letters to Yates, to Mr. Dickens, and to the Committee 

76 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

of the Garrick, are dated from this same No. 36 Onslow 
Square, and all of them, no doubt, penned in that same 
room over the porch where Hodder fifty years ago took his 
dictation. And, too, within fifty feet of the window from 
which Harry's determined and ever-to-be obeyed aunt 
called her small nephew to her side. 



77 



CHAPTER VII 
JERMYN STREET 



CHAPTER VII 
JERMYN STREET 

ON THIS June morning — and there can be lovely days 
in England, days when Nature says: "Yes, I am 
sorry; I have treated you rather badly all winter, 
but now for a sample of what I can do to make it up to 
you" — on this June morning, then, Jermyn Street was 
seen at its best — one of the few picturesque mid-city streets 
really left in London. Its narrowness helped and so did 
the burst of green from out St. James's Yard which hung 
over the asphalt, and so did the quiet corner of the old 
church itself — one of Christopher Wren's. 

And yet the street had its drawbacks. One of them — 
and this to me was most humiliating — was the discovery 
that while I had been treated with becoming respect in most 
of my wanderings over London, that here, in the once most 
famous quarter of the town — the resort of the best bred, 
most courteous and most illustrious men of England — I 
was received with marked distrust because of my trade. 
A man who sits in a taxi, with an easel on the front seat, and 
his fingers black as a chimney sweep's, is really no better 
than a patent-medicine vendor who cries out the virtues 
of his nostrums from the top of a soap box, or the fakir 

81 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

who sells tooth wash, patent stovelid lifters, or china- 
mending cement from behind a push-cart. 

To-day — and I blush to tell it — I was ordered off 
Jermyn Street. Told to "move on" — to evaporate into 
thin air. Not by a minion of the law, which would have 
been bearable, but by a plain, well-to-do, matter-of-fact 
citizen who said that it was his busy day and that my taxi 
and I were in the way of numbers of carriage customers 
who bought their hats and caps in his shop, and that he 
would call the police — or words to that effect — if I delayed 
my activities an instant. 

He had come into view by this time — I could see him 
below my canvas, as he stood gesticulating on the side- 
walk. A large, florid person, in white spats, checked trou- 
sers, double-breasted waistcoat, and spectacles. He was 
also bald, and had muttonchop side-whiskers. 

And he was very positive. 

I began at his spats, and, in concilatory terms, addressed 
him, all the way up his fat body, until I reached his irate 
face, and then, as was my custom with obdurate and not- 
to-be pacified persons, turned him over to Evins, and re- 
sumed my work : A line of beautiful carts, loaded with 
enchanting bricks, hauled by adorable horses dragging great 
bunches of hair tied to their fetlocks, had stopped for a 
moment in my right-hand foreground, the whole accent- 
uating a necessary high light, and there was no time to 
be lost. 

Evins advanced under heavy fire, deployed to the left, 
and opened within a few inches of the enemy. 

There came a rattling fire of expletives, the bursting 

82 



















*\~ i ■ 




V" 






«5i 






V : 






^ 


1 






IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

of an oath charged with dynamite — (hats and caps set it 
off) — a closer knitting of the crowd, and I was about to 
waive my paint rag in surrender, when a fat man in a white 
apron forced his way to my side. 

"This 'ere carriage comp'ny be Mowed!" he cried. "He 
don't hev none — and won't to-day cause it's Saturday. 
If ye want to move yer taxi in front of my door, Guvnor, 
ye can and welcome. I keep this public," and he pointed 
to a barroom ten feet farther along the sidewalk, "and if 
ye say what'll ye hev, I'll bring it out to ye." 

Both sides ceased firing. 

Evins stepped up and saluted. 

"This is a friend of mine, sir — very perticular friend. 
I'll move her if ye don't mind," and he slid in behind the 
steering wheel. "How's that? Can ye see all right? Some 
o' these here one and six fellows put on more airs than a 
Lord Mayor." All of which leads me to believe that the 
manners of those now living on Jermyn Street have more 
or less degenerated since the days when Henry Jermyn, 
Earl of St. Albans, laid out the roadway in 1667/ 

For great and distinguished people — sometimes in peri- 
wigs, sometimes in knee breeches — have taken the air 
up and down these narrow sidewalks. Colonel Churchill 
(afterward the great Duke of Marlborough) ; Gray the poet; 
Sir Isaac Newton; Sir Walter Scott, who was seized with 
his last illness at No. 76 (now Turkish Baths); Sydney 
Smith, who occupied No. 81, as well as Secretary Craggs, 
Addison's friend, who died here in 1721. 

And then there was Mr. William Makepeace Thackeray, 
than whom no finer gentleman ever put foot on sole leather, 

85 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

and whose home may still be seen some eight or ten doors 
from Regent Street within a step of the Geological 
Museum. 

"Knocking at the private entrance," says Mr. Vizetelly, 
in speaking of his visit to Mr. Thackeray in this very house,, 
"a young lodging-house slavey, in answer to my inquiries, 
made me follow her upstairs, I did so, to the very top of 
the house, and after my card had been handed in, I was 
asked to enter the front apartment, where a tall, slim in- 
dividual between thirty and thirty-five years of age, with a 
pleasant, smiling countenance, and a bridgeless nose, and 
clad in a dressing-gown of decided Parisian cut, rose from a 
small table standing close to the near window to receive me. 
When he stood up the low pitch of the room caused him to 
look even taller than he really was, and his actual height 
was well over six feet. The apartment was an exceedingly 
plainly furnished bedroom, with common rush-seated chairs, 
and painted French bedstead, and with neither looking- 
glass nor prints on the bare, cold, cheerless-looking walls. 
On the table from which Mr. Thackeray had risen a white 
cloth was spread, on which was a frugal breakfast tray — a 
cup of chocolate and some dry toast; and huddled together 
at the other end were writing materials, two or three num- 
bers of Frasefs Magazine, and a few slips of manuscript. 
I presented Mr. Nickisson's letter — (Nickisson was then 
the editor of Frasefs Magazine, having succeeded Dr. 
Maginn) — and explained the object of my visit, when Mr. 
Thackeray at once undertook to write (for the forthcoming 
Pictorial Times). ... So satisfied was he with the 
three guineas offered him for a couple of columns weekly, 

86 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

that he jocularly expressed himself willing to sign an agree- 
ment for life upon these terms." 

And here upon Jermyn Street, if I may be permitted in 
such company, no less a person than the worthy scribe 
himself may always be found, whenever he is in London, at 
his friend Jules's, opposite Prince's. 

Here, too, lived Colonel Newcome and Bobbachy Baw- 
hawder, whose adventures are chronicled in "The Lion 
Huntress of Belgravia," as well as "Henry Esmond" and 
many others. 

I quote from "Esmond," not only because Addison 
comes into the narrative, but because I have a strong 
conviction, after looking the ground over, that the hat 
and cap shop, occupied by the gentleman in spats, covers 
the site of the bookstore referred to in the text. 

"Quitting the Guard-table one Sunday afternoon, when 
by chance Dick had a sober fit upon him, he and his friend 
(Henry Esmond) were making their way down Germain 
Street, and Dick all of a sudden left his companion's arm, 
and ran after a gentleman who was poring over a folio 
volume at the bookshop near to St. James's church. . . . 

"'Harry Esmond, come hither,' cries out Dick. 'Thou 
hast heard me talk over and over again of my dearest Joe, 
my guardian angel?' 

"' Indeed,' says Mr. Esmond, with a bow, 'it is not from 
you only that I have learnt to admire Mr. Addison. We 
loved good poetry at Cambridge as well as at Oxford; and 
I have some of yours by heart, though I have put on a red 
coat.'. . . . "0 qui canoro blandius Orpheo vocale 
ducis carmen;" shall I go on, sir?' says Mr. Esmond, who, 

87 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

indeed, had read and loved the charming Latin poems of 
Mr. Addison, as every scholar of that time knew and admired 
them. 

'"This is Captain Esmond who was at Blenheim,' says 
Steele. 

"'Lieutenant Esmond,' says the other, with a low bow, 
'at Mr. Addison's service.' 

"'I have heard of you,' says Mr. Addison, with a smile; 
as, indeed, everybody about town. . . . 

"'We were going to the "George" to take a bottle before 
the play,' says Steele: 'wilt thou be one, Joe?' 

'Mr. Addison said his lodgings were hard by, where he 
was still rich enough to give a good bottle of wine to his 
friends; and invited the two gentlemen to his apartment in 
the Haymarket, whither we accordingly went. 

"'I shall get credit with my landlady,' says he, with a 
smile, 'when she sees two such fine gentlemen as you come 
up my stair.' And he politely made his visitors welcome 
to his apartment, which was indeed but a shabby one, 
though no grandee of the land could receive his guests with 
a more perfect and courtly grace than this gentleman. A 
frugal dinner, consisting of a slice of meat and a penny loaf, 
was awaiting the owner of the lodgings. 'My wine is better 
than my meat,' says Mr. Addison; 'my Lord Halifax sent 
me the burgundy.' " 

But all these fine old days have passed, and so have the 
fine gentlemen, young and old, who made them notable. 
We have barrooms now in Jermyn Street, with swinging 
glass doors, and fishmongers' stalls, with raw salmon and 
huge crabs stretched out on zinc-covered tables, or con- 

88 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

fined in yellow ice; hotels with lifts; haberdashers' windows 
filled with shirts and neckties, to say nothing of hat and 
cap establishments whose owners storm up and down their 
sidewalks treating poor, but honest, painters with the same 
contempt and insolence that they would a peddler. 



CHAPTER VIII 
BERKELEY SQUARE 



CHAPTER VIII 
BERKELEY SQUARE 

NO SUCH changes have fallen upon this — the court 
end of the town, since it was laid out in the middle 
of the eighteenth century under Robert Walpole, 
then Prime Minister. At No. 11, so the records show, lived 
his son Horace — chiefly from 1779 to 1797; at No. 13 
the Marquis of Hertford began to collect what is now the 
Wallace Collection; at No. 25 lived Charles James Fox; at 
No. 28 Lord Brougham entertained as Lord Chancellor; at 
No. 38 Lady Jersey's dinners and balls were the talk of the 
town; at No. 45 Lord Clive committed suicide in 1774, and 
in the corner house on Bruton Street Colly Cibber lived 
and died. 

In fact, many houses of the period are still identified by 
these names, and some of them have the iron torch- 
extinguishers hanging at their doorposts. And even at this 
late day the carriage of his Majesty the King can be found 
outside the stoops of the great people whose doors open on 
the Square. 

That which drew me to it was the fact that on this very 
square was set up one of the most brilliant booths in all 
Vanity Fair. 

93 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

"All the world knows that Lord Steyne's town palace 
stands in Gaunt Square, out of which Great Gaunt Street 
leads, whither we first conducted Rebecca in the time of the 
departed Sir Pitt Crawley. Peering over the railings and 
through the black trees into the garden of the square, you see 
a few miserable governesses with wan-faced pupils wander- 
ing round and round it, and round the dreary grass-plot 
in the centre of which rises the statue of Lord Gaunt, who 
fought at Minden, in a three-tailed wig, and otherwise 
habited like a Roman Emperor. Gaunt House occupies 
nearly a side of the square. The remaining three sides are 
composed of mansions that have passed away into dow- 
agerism ; tall, dark houses, with window frames of stone, or 
picked out of a lighter red. Little light seems to be behind 
those lean, comfortless casements now; and hospitality to 
have passed away from those doors as much as the laced 
lacqueys and link-boys of old times, who used to put out 
their torches in the blank iron extinguishers that still flank 
the lamps over the steps. Brass plates have penetrated into 
the Square — doctors, the Diddlesex Bank, Western Branch 
— the English and European Reunion, etc. — it has a 
dreary look — nor is my Lord Steyne's palace less dreary. 
All I have ever seen of it is the vast wall in front, with the 
rustic columns at the great gate, through which an old 
porter peers sometimes with a fat and gloomy red face — 
and over the wall the garret and bedroom windows, and the 
chimneys, out of which there seldom comes any smoke 
now." 

While there is some conflict over the exact location of this 
noble mansion, all authorities agree that Gaunt Square was 

94 




UJ 

< 

D 

a 
>* 

UJ 

J 

W 
CO 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

really Berkeley Square, and that Great Gaunt Street is none 
other than the Hill Street of to-day — a little street which 
according to Mr. Thackeray himself runs east of the park, 
halfway up the hill, as can be seen in my sketch. I there- 
fore pin my faith to the word of the man who should have 
known best. Certainly, there can be no question that the 
blackened old relic on the left of my drawing is of the period; 
nor can there be any doubt of its spaciousness and aristo- 
cratic bearing and dignity. On its rails, too, there still can 
be found "black iron extinguishers" which the link-boys 
used, and from one of whose torches Rawdon Crawley lit his 
cigar the night he and Wenham left this same porch together. 

And so I had Evins manoeuvre his taxi until the over- 
hanging trees shaded my canvas, my eye on Hill Street as 
well as the great house on my left. Indeed, from no other 
part of the Square can there be seen, in conjunction with 
Hill Street, a mansion big and pretentious enough to have 
housed so distinguished an aristocrat. That His Imperial 
Majesty King George had dined the night before with Lord 
Rosebery, whose house is near the top of the hill (and Evins 
confirmed it from the morning paper he was reading), was 
interesting of course, although I had not been invited, but 
not half so interesting to me as identifying the town palace 
in which Mistress Becky Sharp was entertained on the night 
of her triumph, when she was "introduced to the best of 
company." 

She would have left her Rawdon "at home, but that 
virtue ordained that her husband should be by her side to 
protect the timid and fluttering little creature on her first 
appearance in polite society." 

97 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

"Lord Steyne stepped forward, taking her hand, and 
greeting her with great courtesy, and presenting her to Lady 
Steyne, and their ladyships, her daughters. Their lady- 
ships made three stately courtesies, and the elder lady to 
be sure gave her hand to the newcomer, but it was as cold 
and lifeless as marble. 

"Becky took it, however, with grateful humility; and 
performing a reverence which would have done credit to the 
best dancing master, put herself at Lady Steyne's feet, as 
it were, by saying that his lordship had been her father's 
earliest friend and patron, and that she, Becky, had learned 
to honour and respect the Steyne family from the days of her 
childhood. The fact is, that Lord Steyne had once pur- 
chased a couple of pictures of the late Sharp, and the affec- 
tionate orphan could never forget her gratitude for that 
favour. 

"The Lady Bareacres then came under Becky's cogni- 
zance — to whom the colonel's lady made also a most 
respectful obeisance; it was returned with severe dignity 
by the exalted person in question. 

"'I had the pleasure of making your ladyship's acquaint- 
ance at Brussels, ten years ago,' Becky said, in her most 
winning manner. 'I had the good fortune to meet Lady 
Bareacres at the Duchess of Richmond's ball, the night 
before the battle of Waterloo. And I recollect your lady- 
ship, and my Lady Blanche, your daughter, sitting in the 
carriage in the porte-cochere at the Inn, waiting for horses. 
I hope your ladyship's diamonds are safe.' "... 

"But it was when the ladies were alone that Becky knew 
the tug of war would come. And then indeed the little 

98 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

woman found herself in such a situation, as made her ac- 
knowledge the correctness of Lord Steyne's caution to her to 
beware of the society of ladies above her own sphere. As 
they say the persons who hate Irishmen most are Irish- 
men: so, assuredly, the greatest tyrants over women are 
women. When poor little Becky, alone with the ladies, 
went up to the fireplace whither the great ladies had re- 
paired, the great ladies marched away and took possession 
of a table of drawings. When Becky followed them to the 
table of drawings, they dropped off one by one to the fire 
again. She tried to speak to one of the children (of whom 
she was commonly fond in public places), but Master 
George Gaunt was called away by his mamma; and the 
stranger was treated with such cruelty finally, that even 
Lady Steyne herself pitied her and went up to speak to the 
friendless little woman. 

"'Lord Steyne,' said her ladyship, as her wan cheeks 
glowed with a blush, 'says you sing and play very beauti- 
fully, Mrs. Crawley. I wish you would do me the kindness 
to sing to me.' 

"'I will do anything that may give pleasure to my Lord 
Steyne or to you,' said Rebecca, sincerely grateful, and 
seating herself at the piano began to sing. 

"She sang religious songs of Mozart, which had been 
early favourites of Lady Steyne, and with such sweetness 
and tenderness that the lady, lingering round the piano, sat 
down by its side and listened until the tears rolled down her 
eyes. It is true that the opposition ladies at the other end 
of the room kept up a loud and ceaseless buzzing and talking, 
but the Lady Steyne did not hear those rumours. She was 

99 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

a child again — and had wandered back through a forty 
years' wilderness to her Convent Garden. The chapel 
organ had pealed the same tones, the organist, the sister 
whom she loved best of the community, had taught them to 
her in those early happy days. She was a girl once more, 
and the brief period of her happiness bloomed out again 
for an hour — she started when the jarring doors were flung 
open, and with a loud laugh from Lord Steyne, the men of 
the party entered full of gaiety. 

"He saw at a glance what had happened in his absence, 
and was grateful to his wife for once. He went and spoke 
to her and called her by her Christian name, so as again to 
bring blushes to her pale face. 'My wife says you have 
been singing like an angel,' he said to Becky. Now there 
are angels of two kinds, and both sorts, it is said, are 
charming in their way. 

"Whatever the previous portion of the evening had been, 
the rest of that night was a great triumph for Becky. She 
sang her very best, and it was so good that every one of the 
men came and crowded round the piano. The women, her 
enemies, were left quite alone. And Mr. Paul Jefferson 
Jones thought he had made a conquest of Lady Gaunt by 
going up to her ladyship and praising her delightful friend's 
first-rate singing." 

It was at the close of another great rout at Gaunt House 
— poor Rawdon Crawley having put his little Becky into 
her carriage — that he and Mr. Wenham lighted their 
cigars from the torch of a link-boy, and strolled off to- 
gether, followed by two persons. 

"When they had walked down Gaunt Square a few score 

100 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

of paces, one of the men came up, and touching Rawdon 
on the shoulder, said, 'Beg your pardon, Colonel, I wish 
to speak to you most particular.' This gentleman's ac- 
quaintance gave a loud whistle as the latter spoke, at which 
signal a cab came clattering up from those stationed at the 
gate of Gaunt House — and the aide-de-camp ran round 
and placed himself in front of Colonel Crawley. 

"That gallant officer at once knew what had befallen 
him. He was in the hands of the bailiffs." 

We all know the results. How Jane (Lady Crawley) 
came to Rawdon's rescue in the Sponging House, and how, 
after Mr. Moss, the bailiff, had been satisfied, Becky's 
husband, his eyes running over with gratitude, had sought 
his own home once more. 

But let Mr. Thackeray tell it: 

"Rawdon left her and walked home rapidly. It was nine 
o'clock at night. He ran across the streets, and the great 
squares of Vanity Fair, and at length came up breathless 
opposite his own house. He started back and fell against the 
railings, trembling as he looked up. The drawing-room 
windows were blazing with light. She had said that she 
was in bed and ill. He stood there for some time, the light 
from the rooms on his pale face. 

" He took out his door-key and let himself into the house. 
He could hear laughter in the upper rooms. He was in the 
ball dress in which he had been captured the night before. 
He went silently up the stairs, leaning against the banisters 
at the stairhead. Nobody was stirring in the house besides 
— all the servants had been sent away. Rawdon heard 
laughter within, laughter and singing. Becky was singing 

101 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

a snatch of the song of the night before; a hoarse voice 
shouted 'Bravo! Bravo!' — it was Lord Steyne's. 

" Rawdon opened the door and went in. A little table with 
a dinner was laid out — and wine and plate. Steyne was 
hanging over the sofa on which Becky sat. The wretched 
woman was in brilliant full toilet, her arms and all her 
fingers sparkling with bracelets and rings, and the brilliants 
on her breast which Steyne had given her. He had her 
hand in his, and was bowing over it to kiss it, when Becky 
started up with a faint scream as she caught sight of Raw- 
don's white face. At the next instant she tried to smile, a 
horrid smile, as if to welcome her husband, and Steyne rose 
up, grinding his teeth, pale, and with fury in his looks 

"He, too, attempted a laugh — and came forward hold- 
ing out his hand. 'What, come back! How d'ye do, 
Crawley?' he said, the nerves of his mouth twitching as he 
tried to grin at the intruder. 

"There was that in Rawdon's face which caused Becky 
to fling herself before him. 'I am innocent, Rawdon,' she 
said; 'before God, I am innocent.' She clung hold of his 
coat, of his hands; her own were all covered with serpents, 
and rings, and baubles. T am innocent. Say I am inno- 
cent,' she said to Lord Steyne. 

"He thought a trap had been laid for him and was as 

furious with the wife as with the husband. 'You innocent! 

Damn you,' he screamed out. 'You innocent! Why every 

trinket you have on your body is paid for by me. I have 

given you thousands of pounds which this fellow has spent, 

and for which he has sold you. Innocent, by ! You're 

as innocent as your mother, the ballet-girl, and your hus- 

102 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

band the bully. Don't think to frighten me as you have 
done others. Make way, sir, and let me pass;' and Lord 
Steyne seized up his hat, and, with flame in his eyes, and 
looking his enemy fiercely in the face, marched upon him, 
never for a moment doubting that the other would give 
way. 

"But Rawdon Crawley, springing out, seized him by the 
neckcloth, until Steyne, almost strangled, writhed, and bent 
under his arm. 'You lie, you dog,' said Rawdon. 'You 
lie, you coward and villain ! ' And he struck the peer twice 
over the face with his open hand, and flung him bleeding 
to the ground. It was all done before Rebecca could inter- 
pose. She stood there trembling before him. She admired 
her husband, strong, brave, and victorious. 

"'Come here,' he said. She came up at once. 

"'Take off those things.' She began, trembling, pulling 
the jewels from her arms, and the rings from her shaking 
fingers, and held them all in a heap, quivering and looking 
up at him. 

"'Throw them down,' he said, and she dropped them. 
He tore the diamond ornament out of her breast, and flung 
it at Lord Steyne. It cut him on his bald forehead. 
Steyne wore the scar to his dying day." 

Fine writing this; unsurpassed by any man of his time — 
or any other, some enthusiasts say. So thought Hayward 
of the Edinburgh Review in a criticism on "Vanity Fair," 
printed in 1848, when he said: "At this moment the rising 
generation are supplied with the best of their mental 
aliment by writers whose names are a dead letter to the 

103 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

mass, and among the most remarkable of these is Michael 
Angelo Titmarsh, alias William Makepeace Thackeray." 
And so thought Charlotte Bronte who in 1847 wrote: 
"Why have I alluded to this man? I have alluded to 
him, reader, because I think I see in him an intellect pro- 
founder and more unique than his contemporaries have yet 
recognized; because I regard him as the first social regenera- 
tor of the day — as the very master of that working corps 
who would restore to rectitude the warped system of things ; 
because I think no commentator on his writings has yet 
found the comparison that suits him, the terms which rightly 
characterize his talent. They say he is like Fielding: they 
talk of his wit, humour, comic powers. He resembles 
Fielding as an eagle does a vulture; Fielding could stoop 
on carrion, but Thackeray never does. His wit is bright, 
his humour attractive, but both bear the same relation to his 
serious genius that the mere lambent sheet-lightning playing 
under the edge of the summer cloud does to the electric 
death-spark hid in its womb." 

And so thought Mr. Thackeray himself, modest as he 
always was, and often disheartened over his work. "Down 
on your knees, you rogue," he once said to James T. Fields, 
when the two stood in front of the author's home. "Down 
on your knees, I say, for here 'Vanity Fair' was penned; and 
I will go down with you for I have a high opinion of that 
little production myself." 

And later on (I am still quoting Fields), when 
"A friend congratulated him once on that touch in 
'Vanity Fair' in which Becky admires her husband when he 
is giving Steyne the punishment which ruins her for life. 

104 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

'Well,' he said, 'when I wrote that sentence, I slapped my 
fist on the table, and said, "That is a touch of genius." ' 

Sixty-five years ago all this and since then the reading 
world has confirmed the spoken and written word of the 
author's time, and the praise and appreciation will con- 
tinue as long as our language exists. 

All of which accounts for the fact that in June, 1912, I 
am sitting in a taxi under the over-arching trees of Berkeley 
Square, working away like mad on a charcoal sketch of what 
I choose to call the very house in which the immortal 
Becky and some of the other puppets in Vanity Fair 
danced to the music of their Masters' genius. 



105 



CHAPTER IX 

ST. GEORGE'S CHURCH 
HANOVER SQUARE 



CHAPTER IX 

ST. GEORGE'S CHURCH 
HANOVER SQUARE 

THERE is a wedding in this famous old church this 
June morning — a morning filled with tears and 
sunshine — for it rains and clears up every fifteen 
minutes. I watch the carriages drive up, huge boutonieres 
in the lapels of the drivers, their whips tied with ribbons, 
and from my vantage ground on the back seat of my taxi 
I get the shimmer of silk and lace, sombre black coats, 
and white shirt-fronts. 

Two lines of spectators fringing the carpet conceal the 
bride and her maids of honour, as they trip from their 
equipages under umbrellas, for there is no awning as is 
usual with us. Then come the muffled strains of the organ, 
and later on the party emerge, again are swallowed up in 
the various cabs and carriages, and are whirled away, and 
the two lines of spectators melt together — the women and 
children helping themselves to the flowers scattered over the 
rain-soaked carpet and porch. 

In half an hour another party drives up — and the same 
scene is enacted, except, perhaps, that this second bride 
catches the sunshine in her face, whilst the lace and orange 

109 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

blossoms of the first were spattered with rain-drops — and so 
the game goes on. Five weddings a day in St. George's, 
Hanover Square, is about the average in the season, and 
June marks its height. 

If I have read my "Newcomes" aright, little has been 

changed here since that other morning in June 18 , 

except, perhaps, that the costumes and appointments of the 
contracting parties are less elaborate, and the social emi- 
nence of their guests less exalted. 

Indeed few weddings of the day have ever surpassed that 
of Barnes Newcome and Lady Clara Pulleyn. 

"Finer flounces, finer bonnets, more lovely wreaths, more 
beautiful lace, smarter carriages, bigger white bows, larger 

footmen, were not seen, during all the season of 18 , than 

appeared round about St. George's, Hanover Square, in the 
beautiful month of June succeeding that September when so 
many of our friends, the Newcomes, were assembled at 
Baden. Those flaunting carriages, powdered and favoured 
footmen, were in attendance upon members of the Newcome 
family and their connections, who were celebrating what is 
called a marriage in high life in the temple within. Shall 
we set down a catalogue of the dukes, marquises, earls, who 
were present, cousins of the lovely bride? . . . Lady 
Clara Pulleyn, the lovely and accomplished daughter of the 
Earl and Countess of Dorking; of the beautiful bridesmaids, 
the Ladies Henrietta Belinda Adelaide Pulleyn, Miss New- 
come, Miss Alice Newcome, Miss Maude Newcome, Miss 
Anna Maria (Hobson) Newcome; and all the other per- 
sons engaged in the ceremony. It was performed by the 

Right Honourable and Right Reverend Viscount Gal- 

110 



THACKERAY'S LONDON 

lowglass, Bishop of Ballyshannon, brother-in-law to the 
bride, assisted by the Honourable and Reverend Hercules 
O'Grady, his lordship's chaplain, and the Reverend John 
Bulders, rector of St. Mary's Newcome." 

From among the throngs of lookers on, had I had the 
heart I could, no doubt, myself, have picked out that: 

"Woman of vulgar appearance and disorderly aspect, 
accompanied by two scared children, who took no part in 
the disorder occasioned by their mother's proceeding, except 
by their tears and outcries to augment the disquiet," and 
who "made her appearance in one of the pews of the church, 
was noted there by persons in the vestry, was requested 
to retire by a beadle, and was finally induced to quit the 
sacred precincts of the building by the very strongest 
persuasion of a couple of policemen; X and Y laughed at 
one another, and nodded their heads knowingly as the poor 
wretch, with her whimpering boys, was led away. They 
understood very well who the personage was who had come 
to disturb the matrimonial ceremony; it did not commence 
until Mrs. De Lacy (as this lady chose to be called) had 
quitted this temple of Hymen. She slunk through the 
throng of emblazoned carriages, and the press of footmen 
arrayed as spendidly as Solomon in his glory. John jeered 
at Thomas, William turned his powdered head, and signalled 
Jeames, who answered with a corresponding grin, as the 
woman, with sobs, and wild imprecations, and frantic 
appeals, made her way through the splendid crowd, escorted 
by her aides-de-camp in blue." 

Such tragedies, no doubt, are of common occurrence 

within the portals of St. George, and if one were in search 

111 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

of material for a book, instead of line and mass for a 
picture, he could hardly do better than hang around 
this famous old Church, and study the faces that come 
and go. 

Evins had his opinions, and did not hesitate to express 
them. 

"Some on 'em will wish they hadn't never seen the place 
before they're five year older, sir. I took a young chit of a 
girl and her mother to them steps last winter, both on 'em 
rigged out amazin', and a man old enough to be her grand- 
father was waitin' for her, and blame me if the two didn't 
stand up together and were married right 'fore my eyes, for I 
left my car across the street and went in, thinkin' some- 
thin' was goin' to happen, and it did. 

"They come out together, and the two, seein' I was not 
by the curb, called to one of our drivers and got in, leavin* 
the mother on the stoop, and up comes a young fellow with 
his eyes a blazin' and shakes his fist in her face, and says, 
'It's all your fault,' and while I was wonderin' what was 
up, he shoved her into a four-wheeler and jumped in him- 
self, and I didn't even get my fare. What do you think o' 
that, sir? And so I say it would be better if some of these 
loon-atics stayed at home." 

When the last touch had been put on my sketch, I 
directed Evins to run the car to the entrance of the Church 
that I might get a closer and more detailed view of what 
had heretofore been but a mass of broken grays against a 
luminous sky. 

The debris of the last wedding were still to be seen ; the 

carpet had been rolled back, to be unrolled again when the 

112 




ST. GEORGE S CHURCH, HANOVER SQUARE 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

next arrival required it, but the crushed roses, bits of smilax, 
and scattered grains of rice, were still visible. 

I passed inside and walked to the rail, where so many 
couples had been sentenced for life to either happiness or 
misery. It was not difficult to pick out the exact spot 
where Barnes Newcome and Lady Clara had stood, nor was 
it difficult to repeople the now deserted Church with the 
gray throng. 

We know what happened in her own and Jack Belsize's 
case. How the heart-broken lover disappeared imme- 
diately after the ceremony and wandered over the continent. 
How: 

''It was said he had broken the bank at Homburg last 
autumn; had been heard of during the winter at Milan, 
Venice, and Vienna; and when, a few months after the 
marriage of Barnes Newcome and Lady Clara, Jack's 
elder brother died, and he himself became the next in suc- 
cession to the title and estates of Highgate, many folks said 
it was a pity little Barney's marriage had taken place so 
soon." 

As for Barnes Newcome and his share in the comedy, it is 
best told in the talk that that distinguished banker and 
member of Parliament, now Sir Barnes Newcome, had with 
Lady Kew: 

"I want you to send Clara and the children to Newcome. 
They ought to go, sir; that is why I sent for you; to tell you 
that. Have you been quarrelling as much as usual? * I 
didn't come to hear this, ma'am,' says Barnes, livid with 
rage. 

"'You struck her, you know you did, Sir Barnes New- 

115 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

come. She rushed over to me last year on the night you 
did it, you know she did.' 

"'Great God, ma'am. You know the provocation,' 
screams Barnes. 

"'Provocation or not, I don't say. But from that 
moment she has beat you. You fool, to write her a letter 
and ask her pardon ! If I had been a man, I would rather 
have strangled my wife than have humiliated myself so 
before her. She will never forgive that blow.' 

"I was mad when I did it; and she drove me mad,' says 
Barnes. 'She has the temper of a fiend and the ingenuity 
of the devil. In two years an entire change has come over 
her. If I had used a knife to her I should not have been 
surprised. But it is not with you to reproach me about 
Clara. Your ladyship found her for me.' " 

As to Lady Clara, was it any wonder that the customary 
thing happened, as we gather from the pages of the text? 
How on one occasion Jack Belsize, now Lord Highgate, who 
sat next to her at dinner, was "whispering all the while 
into her ringlets." How, later on, in the cloak room at 
Lady Ann's mansion during a great ball there "sits Lady 
Clara Newcome, with a gentleman bending over her 
just in such an attitude as the bride is, in Hogarth's 
* Marriage a la Mode,' as the counsellor talks to her. Lady 
Clara starts up, as a crowd of blushes come into her wan 
face, and tries to smile, and rises to greet my wife, and says 
something about it being so dreadfully hot in the upper 
rooms, and so very tedious waiting for the carriages. The 
gentleman advances toward me with a military stride, and 
says, 'How do you do, Mr. Pendennis? How's our young 

116 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

friend, the painter?' I answer Lord Highgate civilly 
enough, whereas my wife will scarce speak a word in reply 
to Lady Clara Newcome." 

And then the summing up : after Lady Clara's and Lord 
Highgate' s elopement. 

"Does the Right Reverend Prelate who did the bene- 
dictory business for Barnes and Clara, his wife, repent in 
secret? Do the parents who pressed the marriage, and the 
fine folks who signed the book, and ate the breakfast, and 
applauded the bridegroom's speech, feel a little ashamed? 
Hymen Hymensee! The bishops, beadles, clergy, pew 
openers, and other officers of the temple dedicated to Heaven 
under the invocation of St. George, will officiate in the 
same place at scores and scores more of such marriages; 
and St. George of England may behold virgin after virgin 
offered up to the devouring monster Mammon (with many 
most respectable female dragons looking on) — may see 
virgin after virgin given away, just as in the Soldan of 
Babylon's time, but with never a champion to come to the 
rescue!" 

As I closed the book — I had brought it with me into the 
church that I might study it the more quietly — I could 
not banish from my mind the glimpse of the life of to-day 
which Evins had given me, wondering whether after all 
more than one plot and four characters were ever needed 
in staging the domestic tragedies of our own, or of any other 
time : the girl, the woman who sold her, the man who bought 
her, and that other man whom she loves, and who, having 
stolen her heart, straightway steals her body. 

117 



CHAPTER X 
THE REFORM CLUB 



M 



CHAPTER X 
THE REFORM CLUB 

"R. THEODORE TAYLOR'S delightful volume, 
"Thackeray the Humourist and the Man of Let- 
ters," published in 1864 — a year after the great 
novelist's death — gives Thackeray's clubs as the Reform, 
the Athenaeum, and the Garrick, adding that the afternoons 
of the last week of his life were almost entirely passed at the 
Reform, and that during all of that time he had never been 
more genial or in such apparently happy moods. Many of 
his brother members have, since his death, recalled to each 
other one of the tenderest passages among his early sketches 
— "Brown the younger at a Club" — in which the old 
uncle, while showing his nephew the various rooms of the 
club, is represented as recalling memories of men — whose 
names now appeared at the end of the club list under the 
dismal category of "Members Deceased," in which (added 
Thackeray), "You and I shall rank some day." 

Mr. Taylor quotes also from Mr. Shirley Brooks, in his 
account of the last occasion on which the latter saw Mr. 
Thackeray at the Garrick Club, only eight days before his 
death. "On that evening, he enjoyed himself much, in 

his own quiet way, and contributed genially to the enjoy- 

121 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

ment of those who were something less quiet; and, a ques- 
tion arising about a subscription in aid of a disabled artist, 
he instantly offered to increase, if necessary, a sum he had 
previously promised. The writer's very last recollection of 
the * cynic,' therefore, is in connexion with an unasked act 
of Christian kindness. On the following Monday he 
attended the funeral of a lady who was interred in Kensal 
Green Cemetery. On the Tuesday evening he came to his 
favourite club — the Garrick — and asked a seat at the 
table of two friends, who, of course, welcomed him as all 
welcomed Thackeray. It will not be deemed too minute a 
record by any of the hundreds who personally loved him to 
note where he sat for the last time in that club. There is 
in the dining-room on the first floor a nook near the reading 
room. The principal picture hanging in that nook, and 
fronting you as you approach it, is the celebrated one from 
'The Clandestine Marriage,' with Lord Ogleby, Canton, 
and Brush. Opposite to that Thackeray took his seat and 
dined with his friends. He was afterward in the smoking 
room, a place in which he delighted. The Garrick Club will 
remove in a few months, and all these details will be noth- 
ing to its new members, but much to many of its old ones. 
His place there will know him and them no more. On the 
Wednesday he was out several times, and was seen in 
Palace Gardens * reading a book.' Before the dawn on 
Thursday, he was where there is no night." 

Dickens had a still later glimpse of him at the Athenaeum. 
"I saw him . . ." he says, "shortly before Christmas 
at the Athenaeum, when he told me that he had been in bed 

three days, that after those attacks he was troubled with 

122 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

cold shiverings which quite took the power of work out of 
him, and that he had it in his mind to try a new remedy, 
which he laughingly described. He was very cheerful and 
looked very bright." 

These three clubs — the Reform, the Garrick, and the 
Athenaeum — were the ones he loved best. There were 
other resorts that welcomed him — the Cock, in Fleet 
Street, and the London Tavern, within whose hospitable 
oak-panelled walls he and his friends and admirers enjoyed 
a memorable dinner. 

"Covers were laid for sixty" (I still quote from 
Mr. Taylor's book), "and sixty and no more sat down 
precisely at the minute named to do honour to the 
great novelist. Sixty very hearty shakes of the hand did 
Thackeray receive from sixty friends on that occasion; and 
hearty cheers from sixty vociferous and friendly tongues 
followed the chairman's, Mr. Charles Dickens, proposal of 
his health, and of wishes for his speedy and successful 
return among us. Dickens — the best after-dinner speaker 
now alive — was never happier. He spoke as if he was 
fully conscious that it was a great occasion, and that 
the absence of even one reporter was a matter of con- 
gratulation, affording ampler room to unbend. The table 
was in the shape of a horseshoe having two vice-chairmen ; 
and this circumstance was wrought up and played with 
by Dickens in the true Sam Weller and Charles Dickens 
manner. Thackeray, who is far from what is called 
a good speaker, outdid himself. There was his usual hesi- 
tation; but this hesitation becomes his manner of speak- 
ing and his matter, and is never unpleasant to his hearers, 

123 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

though it is, we are assured, most irksome to himself. This 
speech was full of pathos, and humour, and oddity, with 
bits of prepared parts imperfectly recollected, but most 
happily made good by the felicities of the passing moment. 
It was a speech to remember for its earnestness of purpose 
and its undoubted originality. Then the chairman quitted, 
and many, near and at a distance, quitted with him. Thack- 
eray was on the move with the chairman, when, inspired 
by the moment, Jerrold took the chair, and Thackeray 
remained. Who is to chronicle what now passed? — what 
passages of wit — what neat and pleasant sarcastic speeches 
in proposing healths — what varied and pleasant, ay, and 
at times, sarcastic acknowledgments? Up to the time when 
Dickens left, a good reporter might have given all, and with 
ease, to future ages; but there could be no reporting what 
followed. There were words too nimble and too full of 
flame for a dozen Gurneys, all ears, to catch and preserve. 
Few will forget that night. There was an 'air of wit' about 
the room for three days after." 

It was the Reform Club which he had gladdened by his 
presence the week of his death that now loomed up before 
me out of the fog and smoke — a great, square, sullen mass 
of granite divided from the Carleton Club by a narrow alley 
as is seen in my sketch. 

It looks forbidding enough outside, frowning at you from 
under its heavy browed windows — an aloof, stately, cold 
and unwelcome sort of place. Inside, it may be more cheer- 
ful and more friendly; a London coal fire, an English easy 
chair — and there are none better, or more comfortable — 
and a low reading lamp, may take some of the chill off. 

124 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

Then again, one may be spoken to now and then by some 
other lost soul, hungry for companionship, but I doubt it. 
I am not going to scold. It is racial, perhaps, and the island 
is so small that it is dangerous to rub elbows against every- 
body, but I cannot, all the same, quite smother my feelings. 
My own clubs are scattered from Boston to Washington, 
with a few out West, and often as I prowl about London 
alone, and look up into the faces of the windows of these 
mausoleums, wondering what sort of men are behind them, 
I cannot help recalling the cozy corners of mine at home, into 
which are welcomed hundreds of strangers from all over the 
globe, and with a heartiness and sincerity that sets them to 
thinking. Some of them pinch themselves in amazement, 
wondering whether they are really awake. Yes, it must be 
racial; or, perhaps, the chill of countless fogs has gotten 
into their bones. 

And with this came the thought: What a godsend 
Mr. Thackeray must have been to many within its walls, 
and how the warmth of his geniality must have helped to 
thaw out that peculiar chilly reserve which in many really 
fine, hearty, and ready-to-be-kind Englishmen, is due neither 
to rudeness nor to class distinction, but simply, strange as it 
may appear, to innate shyness. 

The blast of a siren clearing the way for a taxi which 
pulled up on the right at the Carlton,, unloading an important 
personage whom Evins told me was a member of Parliament, 
awoke me from my reverie. The blast was intended for 
me, my being anchored in the middle of the unloading space 
reserved for the elect being nothing short of an outrage. 
The upholstered porter — mostly in red — was evidently of 

127 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

this opinion, and expressed it in a concentrated glower. 
Evins had opinions of his own; I saw that from the way 
his mouth straightened — quite as it did that morning off 
Staple Inn. 

"Are we in the way, Evins? "I asked. 

"No, sir, we ain't; and if we was it wouldn't make no 
difference. Them stuffs in gold lace think they own the 
earth." 



128 



CHAPTER XI 
COVENT GARDEN 



CHAPTER XI 
COVENT GARDEN 

WHEN describing some highly convivial scene, 
Thackeray generally places his characters in one 
of the quaint chophouses and taverns of old Lon- 
don, rather than around the mahogany tables of the more 
famous clubs. 

The Gave of Harmony, fronting Co vent Garden Market 
— he knew in his youth. There to quote from "The New- 
comes," "song and cup " passed merrily, and I daresay the 
songs and bumpers were encored. 

We have his own words as proof that the tap room was 
near Covent Garden, for in "A Night's Pleasure" there oc- 
curs these words: 

"'What! is the old Cave of Harmony still extant?' I 
asked. ' I have not been there these twenty years.' 

"And memory carried me back to the days when Light- 
sides, of Corpus, myself, and little Oaks, the Johnian, came 
up to town in a chaise-and-four, at the long vacation at the 
end of our freshman's year, ordered turtle and venison for 
dinner at the Bedford, blubbered over 'Black-eyed Susan' 
at the play, and then finished the evening at that very 
Harmonic Cave, where the famous English Improvisatore 

131 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

sang with such prodigious talent that we asked him to stay 
with us in the country. 

"'And so the Cave of Harmony is open,' I said, looking 
at little Grigg with a sad and tender interest, and feeling 
that I was about a hundred years old. 

" '/ believe you my baw-aw-oy!' said he, adopting the tone 
of an exceedingly refined and popular actor, whose choral 
and comic powers render him a general favourite. 

'"Does Bivins keep it?' I asked, in a voice of profound 
melancholy. 

'"Hoh! What a flat you are ! You might as well ask if 
Mrs. Siddons acted Lady Macbeth to-night, and if Queen 
Anne's dead or not. I tell you what, Spec, my boy — 
you're getting a regular old flat — fogy, sir, a positive old 
fogy. How the deuce do you pretend to be a man about 
town, and not know that Bivins has left the Cavern? 
Law bless you! Come in and see: I know the landlord 
— I'll introduce you to him.' 

"This was an offer which no man could resist; and so 
Grigg and I went through the Piazza, and down the steps of 
that well-remembered place of conviviality 

"The room was full of young, rakish-looking lads, with a 
dubious sprinkling of us middle-aged youth, and stalwart, 
red-faced fellows from the country, with whiskey noggins 
before them, and bent upon seeing life." 



"He said he would have a sixth glass if we would stop: 
but we didn't; and he took his sixth glass without us. My 
melancholy young friend had begun another comic song, 

132 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

and I could bear it no more. The market carts were rat- 
tling into Covent Garden; and the illuminated clock 
marked all sorts of small hours as we concluded this 
night's pleasure." 

Costigan was generally to be seen at the Cave of Har- 
mony and in the opening chapters of "The Newcomes" 
we are told how the outraged Colonel, after listening to one 
of his ribald songs, denounced the old reprobate in un- 
measured terms, and catching Clive by the arm, marched 
the boy out of the polluted atmosphere into "the fresh 
night air of Covent Garden Market." 

"Holding on by various tables, the Captain had sidled 
up, without accident to himself or any of the jugs and glasses 
round about him, to the table where we sat, and had taken 
his place near the writer, his old acquaintance. 

"... 'He's a great character,' whispered that un- 
lucky King of Corpus to his neighbour, the Colonel . . . 
'Captain Costigan, will you take something to drink?' 

"'Bedad, I will,' says the Captain, 'and I'll sing ye a 
song tu.' 

"The unlucky wretch, who scarcely knew what he was 
doing, or saying, selected one of the most outrageous per- 
formances of his repertoire, fired off a tipsy howl by way 
of overture, and away he went. At the end of the second 
verse the Colonel started up, clapping on his hat, seizing 
his stick, and looking as ferocious as though he had been 
going to do battle with a Pindaree. 'Silence!' he roared 
out. 

'"Hear, hear!' cried certain wags at a farther table. 
'Go on, Costigan!' said others. 

133 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

"'Go on!' cries the Colonel, in his high voice, trembling 
with anger. 'Does any gentleman say, "Go on"? Does 
any man who has a wife and sisters, or children at home, say 
"Go on" to such disgusting ribaldry as this? Do you dare, 
sir, to call yourself a gentleman, and to say that you hold 
the king's commission, and to sit down amongst Christians 
and men of honour, and defile the ears of young boys with 
this wicked balderdash?' 

"'Why do you bring young boys here, old boy?' cries 
a voice of the malcontents. 

"'Why? Because I thought I was coming to a society of 
gentlemen,' cried out the indignant Colonel. 'Because I 
never could have believed that Englishmen could meet 
together and allow a man, and an old man, so to disgrace 
himself. For shame, you old wretch! Go home to your 
bed, you hoary old sinner! And for my part, I'm not sorry 
that my son should see, for once in his life, to what shame 
and degradation and dishonour, drunkenness and whiskey 
may bring a man. Never mind the change, sir! Curse 
the change!' says the Colonel, facing the amazed waiter. 
'Keep it till you see me in this place again; which will be 
never — by George, never!' And shouldering his stick, 
and scowling round at the company of scared bacchana- 
lians the indignant gentleman stalked away, his boy after 
him." 

It is generally conceded that this Cave was no other 
than the old chophouse known as "Evans's" — a resort 
to which Thackeray once took Mr. Lowell to listen to the 
last chapters of "The Newcomes." Since then a new stone 
front has been added and the name changed to that of 

134 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

the Sporting Club, — the white building seen in my sketch 
through the columns of St. Paul's. 

Of the pedigree of the adjoining structures, no question 
can arise. The "Bedford Hotel," which runs out of my 
sketch on its extreme right hand, is to-day the same old pile 
of masonry — black, queer, and fog-stained — that wel- 
comed Thackeray in his younger days, as well as many of 
his characters. Here he invariably "put up," whenever 
in his early wanderings he strayed into London. His de- 
scription of it might almost be written under my sketch, so 
little changes have taken place in the surroundings: 

"The two great national theatres on one side," he says, 
"a churchyard full of mouldy but undying celebrities on the 
other; a fringe of houses studded in every part with anecdote 
or history ; an arcade often more gloomy and deserted than 
a cathedral aisle ; a rich cluster of brown old taverns — one 
of them filled with the counterfeit presentments of many 
actors long since silent, who scowl and smile once more 
from the canvas upon the grandsons of their dead admirers; 
a something in the air which breathes of old books, old 
painters, and old authors; a place beyond all other places 
one would choose in which to hear the chimes at midnight, 
a crystal palace — the representative of the present — 
which presses in timidly from a corner upon many things 
of the past; a withered bank that has been sucked dry by a 
felonious clerk, a squat building with a hundred columns, 
and chapel-looking fronts, which always stands knee-deep 
in baskets, flowers, and scattered vegetables; a common 
centre into which Nature showers her choicest gifts, and 
where the kindly fruits of the earth often nearly choke the 

135 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

narrow thoroughfares; a population that never seems to 
sleep, and that does all in its power to prevent other sleeping ; 
a place where the very latest suppers and the earliest break- 
fasts jostle each other over the footways." 

This same bustle and noise surrounded my easel when I 
opened it under the great portico of St. Paul's, and began 
the composition with the church on my left, its columns 
framing the buildings which Thackeray's pen made so 
real, and so interesting to his readers of to-day. 

The crowd about me was greater, perhaps, than usual, 
because of the novelty of the sight — outdoor painters being 
scarce at Covent Garden Market — andbecause,no doubt, the 
roof of the portico served as a shelter from the rain, which 
seemed determined to make a day of it. But it was a good- 
natured, orderly crowd, the market-men marking a protect- 
ing circle about me with the toes of their heavy boots, the 
women and children looking over their shoulders. 

None of them had ever heard of "Evans's." They all 
knew that the white house between the columns, and which 
my bit of charcoal was making clear to them, had been 
a tavern of one kind or another — longer ago than even 
the oldest could remember — up to the time the Sporting 
Club moved in, but that was as far as their information 
went. 

They "knowed all about" Tavistock's, next the Bedford. 
I could get "a bite and a pint o' bitters easy, if I was a 
bit hongry at Tavistock's." 

And so, the sketch finished and the rain over, I betook 
myself to the old, mouldy, smoky tavern under the arcade, 
and sat me down to the very table no doubt, at which 

136 



jflMBH 








IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

Thackeray, Sir Peter Lely, Turner, Kneller, and many other 
worthies of the time had had "a morsel to eat and a sup o' 
drink " — and out of the same mug, no doubt; carpeted with 
the same sawdust on the floor, the webs of forgotten spiders 
clinging to the rafters overhead. 



139 



CHAPTER XII 

FLEET STREET AND 
"THE COCK" TAVERN 



CHAPTER XII 

FLEET STREET AND 
"THE COCK" TAVERN 

FLEET STREET and its tortuous by-alleys were for 
hundreds of years famous for its taverns. Here not 
only the wits and gourmands of the day made merry, 
but within their hospitable walls could be found at all hours 
of the day, and most of those of the night, men of note and 
quality. 

"The coffee house," to quote Macaulay, "was the Lon- 
doner's home, and those who wished to find a gentleman, 
commonly asked . . . whether he frequented the 
Grecian or the Rainbow." 

Of these but few remain. Of many only their sites are 
known. All of them, however, are remembered because they 
were the haunts of men whose names are household words 
to-day. In the Devil's Tavern, we hear of Swift dining with 
Dr. Garth and Addison, Garth treating; and of Dr. 
Johnson presiding at a supper party which was given to 
Mrs. Charlotte Lenox, in honour of the publication of her 
first novel, "The Life of Harriet Stuart." 

"The supper was elegant," so runs the chronicle, "and 
Johnson had directed that a magnificent hot apple-pie 

143 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

should make a part of it; and this he would have stuck with 
bay leaves, because, forsooth, Mrs. Lenox was an author- 
ess. . . . About five (a. m.) Johnson's face shone with 
meridian splendour, though his drink had been only lemon- 
ade. The dawn of day began to put us in mind of our reck- 
oning; but the waiters were all so overcome with sleep that 
it was two hours before a bill could be had, and it was not 
until near eight that the creaking of the street door gave the 
signal for our departure." 

The famous Kit-Kat Club stood in Shire Lane. Here, in 
Queen Anne's reign, thirty-nine young noblemen and gentle- 
men attached to the House of Hanover were wont to "sleep 
away the days and drink away the nights." 

Hard by was the Bible Tavern, which was appropriately 
chosen by Jack Sheppard for many of his orgies, for it was 
possessed of a trap-door leading to a subterranean passage. 

The Rainbow — the second to be opened in London — 
dated as far back as 1637. Here its proprietor, a certain 
James Farr, a barber, was, in 1657, prevented by the 
Parish from "makinge and sellinge of a drinke called coffee, 
whereby in making the same he annoyeth his neighbours by 
evil smells." 

"Dicks" — now an Italian restaurant — may still be 
found at No. 8 entered by a passage. 

"The Cock" alone survives — one of the few ancient tav- 
erns remaining unaltered internally from the time of James I. 
The outside fell into the clutches of the Demon of Unrest 
in 1887, and was sent to the dumping ground to make 
room for what Hare calls "a ludicrous Temple Bar Me- 
morial." But the inside fittings were rescued bodily, 

144 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

carried across Fleet Street, and set up in its new home, No. 
22, a short distance from its old site at 201 — not a renova- 
tion, nor a patching up, nor making one half of it new to 
match the old, but the putting together in a new room, the 
size of the old one, everything that the old one had contained. 
The old Jacobean fireplace, with its grate, mantel, fender and 
fire tongs and shovel, was set up intact; the same old 
settees were placed in the same relative positions as at No. 
201; the same old prints and sketches, and in the same 
frames, were hung in their old panels on the walls, and the 
same cheap gas jets fastened to the well-smoked ceiling — 
to-day a quarter of a century old. Even now much of the 
old pewter, crockery, and glass can be found on the time- 
worn shelving, while the floor, as in the old days, is bare 
of a carpet, and the time-honoured tables still smile back 
at you from out of the polish made and kept bright by the 
elbows of a hundred celebrities. 

It was to one of these very tables that Pepys, to his 
wife's great aggravation, conducted the pretty Mrs. Knipp, 
and here they drank, ate a lobster, and sang and were 
"mighty merry till almost midnight." 

On another table Tennyson wrote "Will Waterproof's 
Lyrical Monologue," beginning: 

"0 plump head waiter at The Cock, 
To which I most resort, 
How goes the time? 'Tis five o'clock. 
Go fetch a pint of port." 

At still another table Thackeray was accustomed to take 
his chop and stout — it being but a step from Punch's 

147 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

''Round Table," with its discussions, plans, and piles of 
proofs, to a quiet corner in The Cock. And then he loved 
a good dinner: 

"I am a diner-out, and live in London," he writes in one 
of "Mr. Brown's" letters. " I protest, as I look back at the 
men and dinners I have seen in the last week, my mind is 
filled with manly respect and pleasure. How good they 
have been ! how admirable the entertainments ! how worthy 
the men ! 

"Let me, without divulging names, and with a cordial 
gratitude, mention a few of those whom I have met and 
who have all done their duty. 

"Sir, I have sat at table with a great, a world-renowned 
statesman. I watched him during the progress of the ban- 
quet — I am at liberty to say that he enjoyed it like a man. 

"On another day it was a celebrated literary character. 
It was beautiful to see him at his dinner: cordial and 
generous, jovial and kindly, the great author enjoyed him- 
self as the great statesman — may he long give us good 
books and good dinners! 

"Yet another day, and I sat opposite to a Right Rever- 
end Bishop. My lord, I was pleased to see good thing 
after good thing disappear before you, and think no man 
ever better became that rounded episcopal apron. How 
amiable he was; how kind! He put water into his wine. 
Let us respect the moderation of the Church. 

"And then the men learned in the law: How they dine! 
what hospitality, what splendour, what comfort, what 
wine! As we walked away very gently in the moonlight, 
only three days since, from the 's, a friend of my 

148 




FLEET STREET FROM COCK TAVERN 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

youth and myself, we could hardly speak for gratitude: 
'Dear sir,' we breathed fervently, 'ask us soon again.' 
One never has too much at those perfect banquets — no 
hideous headaches ensue, or horrid resolutions about 
adopting Revalenta Arabica for the future — but content- 
ment with all the world, light slumbers, joyful waking to 
grapple with the morrow's work. Ah, dear Bob, those 
lawyers have great merits. There is a dear old judge at 
whose family table if I could see you seated, my desire in 
life would be pretty nearly fulfilled. If you make yourself 
agreeable there, you will be in a fair way to get on in the 
world. But you are a youth still. Youths go to balls: 
men go to dinners." 

Often when he was supposed to be dining at these tables 
of the great, he was tucked away in some quaint tavern. 

"Instead of dancing at Almack's," writes Walter Besant, 
in his "Fifty Years Ago," "he was taking his chop and 
stout at The Cock; instead of gambling at Crockford's, 
he was writing 'copy* for any paper which would take it." 

And it was all he could afford had his friends but known 
it — in those early days when "all that he wrote was not 
taken, and all that was taken was not approved" — when 
even " The Great Hoggarty Diamond" was so little thought 
of at Fraser's, that he had been called upon to shorten it. 
"An incident," says Trollope, "disagreeable in its nature 
to any literary gentleman, and likely to be specially so 
when he knows that his provision of bread, certainly of 
improved bread and butter, is at stake." 

It was his table at The Cock that I had come to see on 
this Saturday afternoon — the only afternoon in the week 

151 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

when the room would be free of guests, every shop being 
cleared of customers at midday in modern London Town. 

Henry, the old head waiter who had been moved across 
in 1887 with the fireplace and fittings, shook his head in 
answer to my inquiry as to the traditions connecting the 
great author with any special tables in the place. And 
so did the flat-nosed boy who sowed the seed of a fresh crop 
of sawdust from a tin pan, and who later on brought up an 
assortment of bread and cheese cut into little dominoes, 
which he scattered over the sawdust "to pizen de rats 
over Sunday," he explained. And so did the proprietor, 
who produced a big book filled with the signatures of many 
celebrities the world over, who had eaten "a double" and 
had their pewters refilled. But careful scrutinizing failed 
to find any record of Mr. Thackeray's name among the 
T's. Neither had he any record of Pendennis or Warring- 
ton, who had their quarters in Lamb Court in the Middle 
Temple, but five minutes away. 

But I had already made up my mind. Thackeray's table 
would be hidden away in some corner, out of reach of the 
man who came in late, joggling the table as he squeezed 
past. It would be near a window, where the light would 
come in over his left shoulder — a necessity with most 
authors. It would, too, be near, and yet far enough away 
from the fire so that its blaze would cheer and yet not 
scorch; and so, after scanning the long narrow room, I 
placed him at the table on the left of my sketch — the one 
on this side of the grate. Here, he would have no opposite 
neighbour, there being only room for one, and here, too, 
his repast eaten and the room empty, he might, as was his 

152 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

custom, pull a wad of crumpled sheets from his coat-tail 
pocket just as he had done that day at Evans's, when he 
exclaimed to Mr. Lowell, "I have killed the Colonel! the 
tears which had been swelling his lids for some time trickling 
down his face, the last word almost an inarticulate sob." 

My sketch finished, Henry broiled me a chop and brought 
me a mug, and I squeezed into Mr. Thackeray's seat and 
opened my napkin, just as he had done scores of times. The 
chop was excellent, and so were the contents of the mug; so 
were the encomiums passed upon my sketch by the pro- 
prietor, Henry, and the flat-nosed boy — the latter sug- 
gesting that it was "drawed to de loife." 

N. B. — Future historians, in writing of this important 
event, will please not get the dates mixed or twisted, as so 
often happens. It was at Mr. Thackeray's table in the new 
Cock, remember, that all this happened, and not with 
Mr. Thackeray in the old. 



153 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE CHESHIRE CHEESE 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE CHESHIRE CHEESE 

OF COURSE he came here, tucked his knees under 
the sharp edges of the heavy oak tables, and ordered 
the dishes and brew he especially liked. This, and 
other like resorts, was his Bohemia, and Bohemia he 
loved. 

"A pleasant land," he says in "Philip" — "not fenced 
with drab stucco like Tyburnia or Belgravia; not guarded 
by a huge standing army of footmen ; not echoing with noble 
chariots; not replete with polite chintz drawing-rooms and 
neat tea-tables; a land over which hangs an endless fog, 
occasioned by much tobacco; a land of chambers, billiard- 
rooms, supper-rooms, oysters; a land of song; a land where 
soda-water flows freely in the morning; a land of tin dish- 
covers from taverns, and frothing porter; a land of lotus- 
eating (with lots of cayenne pepper), of pulls on the river, 
of delicious reading of novels, magazines, and saunterings 
in many studios; a land where men call each other by their 
Christian names; where most are old, where almost all are 
young, and where, if a few oldsters enter, it is because they 
have preserved more tenderly and carefully than others 
their youthful spirits, and the delightful capacity to be idle." 

157 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

And the Cheshire Cheese, then as now, is pure Bohemia. 

If the dishes did not tempt him — particularly a famous 
pudding of lark and oysters, steak and kidney — its asso- 
ciations certainly would, for it was near here, so tradition 
goes, that Goldsmith for the first time received Johnson at 
supper, and it was from here later on, Goldsmith being 
pressed for his rent, that Dr. Johnson set poor Goldsmith 
free. 

The record in detail is worth repeating, as it gives a side 
light on the lives of some great men. 

In 1760 Goldsmith removed to No. 6 Wine Office Court, 
Fleet Street, where he occupied more respectable lodgings 
than any to which he had before aspired. It is nearly 
opposite the well-known Cheshire Cheese Tavern. Here, 
Dr. Johnson first visited him on the 31st of May, 1761. 
He came — his clothes new and his wig nicely powdered, 
wishing, as he explained to Percy (of the "Reliques"), who 
inquired the cause of such unusual neatness, to show a 
better example to Goldsmith, whom he had heard of as 
"justifying his disregard of cleanliness and decency by quot- 
ing his practice." It was from his lodgings in Wine Office 
Court, while Goldsmith's landlady was pressing him within 
doors and the bailiff without, that Dr. Johnson "received 
one morning," so his great friend Boswell reports as saying, 
"a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great dis- 
tress, and as it was not in his power to come to me, begging 
that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a 
guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accord- 
ingly went to him as soon as I was dressed, and found that 
his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was 

158 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

in a violent passion. I perceived that he had already 
changed my guinea, and had a bottle of Madeira and a 
glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he 
would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by 
which he might be extricated. He then told me that he 
had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. 
I looked into it, and saw its merit; told the landlady I 
should soon return, and, having gone to James Newbery, 
a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Gold- 
smith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without 
rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so 
ill." 

The manuscript lay neglected for two years, and was then 
published without a notion of its future popularity. The 
world has since known it as "The Vicar of Wakefield." 

The seat is still shown where the great doctor was wont 
to sit dispensing wisdom; and his portrait, which hangs 
over it — a latter-day addition — is quite clear in my 
sketch, as well as the edge of the table and the window- 
sash dividing the two rooms. 

Closer inspection of the wood of the seat itself reveals 
the reverence in which it is held. To have eaten a chop 
and drank from a mug while at rest on the great lexi- 
cographer's settee, is something to be proud of, and so the 
fibre of the wood is kept at high polish by the trousers of 
thousands of globe-trotters the world over, just as the 
" Pope's Toe" is kept at high polish by the lips of millions 
of devotees. 

Although Boswell fails to mention that the great doctor 
ever darkened the tavern's doors, many of my brother 

161 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

Americans believe this reserved-seat story. Again, they 
like the place, and I do not wonder. Cobwebs, a sanded 
floor, low ceilings, narrow seats, a general appearance of 
falling to pieces — a draught of air from a cool court, if it be 
hot, and a cheery soft-coal fire if it be cold, are comforting 
contrasts to steam heat in a skyscraper. 

In regard to my own belief that Mr. Thackeray was an 
habitue of the place, I admit that while The Cock may have 
been two or three blocks nearer to Brick Court, where he 
lived, and Hare Court, where he studied law, I still maintain 
that the Cheshire Cheese was just as delightful and even more 
convenient for Welsh rare-bits and good old glee-singing at 
midnight, than the "Cave of Harmony." If Captain Cos- 
tigan himself was not met staggering in the narrow alley- 
way, some other equally bibulous gentleman could be 
seen rolling out. These sort of things have been happening 
for years, at the Cheshire Cheese, and may be repeated for 
all I know any day of the coming week. 

My sketch will give you a fair idea of the interior as you 
enter the main room, the floor of which is level with the 
street, but nothing that I or anybody else could do with brush 
or pen could convey to you the faintest idea of its age and 
mustiness— of the cobwebs embroidering the corners of the 
ceiling; of the sawdust and its smell covering the floor; of 
the damp mouldy odours that drift in from the damp alley 
outside, reeking with grime and soggy soot; of the cramped 
little bar, the size of a big packing box, in which are crowded 
as many thirsty men as can be squeezed in; of the breakneck 
stairs that go rickety split to the cellar below, where there is 
running water and a towel; or the staggering flight that 

162 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

twists up to the floor above, where there is a cook-range and 
funny-shaped "coppers" of pottery, in which the famous 
pudding is cooked ; to say nothing of the cramped, tumbled- 
down rooms above where certain choice spirits, members of 
several clubs, still meet on certain nights in the week and 
hold high revel — just as happened, I dare say, in Mr. 
Thackeray's time. 

I ordered a chop, of course, and a mug of 'arf and 'arf, and 
found a table for Evins where he too could eat and drink 
at his leisure — the taxi having been backed up behind a 
pile of brick where Bobby said he would keep an eye on it. 
I had to play havoc however with the arrangement of the 
room before I opened my easel. There were too many 
things in one place — mostly tables, and, as I explained, I 
could see nothing of the interior either over or under them. 

Everybody came at once to my assistance. The tables 
were picked up bodily, the settees shoved back, and a way 
cleared for my stool and easel. The news that an Ameri- 
can was taking notes, with an eye to their being printed, 
including lifelike portraits of the staff, had gone through the 
place like wildfire. 

At the first stroke of my coal, business of every kind came 
to a standstill. Even the trickle of froth, flowing from the 
big keg of ale on the counter of the small bar, dried up. 
Soon proprietor, head waiter, all the subs, both of the bar- 
maids, and five minutes later — as soon as the news reached 
the upper floor — two of the cooks — fat comfortable cooks, 
with the marks of their profession spattered over their per- 
sons — were grouped around my easel. Some were standing 
on settees, others on tables — wherever they could see best. 

163 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

Even the few remaining guests (it was now after three 
o'clock) let their steaks and kidneys get cold and their 
mugs "go dead" to watch the process. 

I "sat them up," of course, when it was all over and was 
told to come again and welcome, and not to forget to send 
a copy of the newspaper, Evins gathering up as we left 
the addresses of a number of individuals, male and female, 
who would be much "obleeged" if I would be so kind." 

Hurry up, you belated ones who have not yet seen the 
Cheshire Cheese. It is the last of the Inns — the oldest 
relic of its kind in all London. 



164 



CHAPTER XIV 
FLEET STREET AND ST. PAUL'S 



CHAPTER XIV 
FLEET STREET AND ST. PAUL'S 

STOPPING my taxi, as I did, on the edge of the decline 
that sweeps toward old St. Paul's, watching the rush 
and choke of the traffic, it was hard for me to believe 
that right under my wheels flowed the Fleet Ditch — the 
greatest of London's sewers. What goes on down below 
the crust of asphalt is just as well hidden from sight. The 
merciful rain, no doubt, helps in the cleansing, and so does 
the emptying of countless tubs — the Englishman being the 
best scrubbed biped on earth. What goes on above is in 
clear sight every hour of the day and night, for nobody 
ever goes to bed in Fleet Street. Here centre the thousand 
wires that bring the news of the world to as many sleepless 
presses, and here the rumble of delivery wagons, loaded 
with tons of journals, is heard from midnight to dawn. 

It has always been the same story. Many of the presses 
of the great publishers and printers have dated back into 
the last century and before. The printing office of Richard 
Tottel, law stationers in the time of Henry VIII pounded 
away here. At the angle of Chancery Lane gate Izaak 
Walton had his " Compleat Angler" printed. Hard by lived 
Drayton and Abraham Cowley, whose father was a type- 

167 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

setter; and Wynkyn de Worde, the famous printer whose 
sign was the Falcon. 

Here, too, along its narrow sidewalks, the unknown 
Michael Angelo Titmarsh was wont to make his disheartened 
way from one printing office to another, in his search for a 
publisher; and here, within walking distance of where I sat 
perched up in my cab, my imagination in full play, Mr. 
William Makepeace Thackeray, but a few years later, cor- 
rected the proof of the pages which were then making him 
famous. 

These earlier years had been bitter indeed to the young 
author. He had failed as an attorney ; he had been cheated 
out of his patrimony by a card-sharper; he had given up 
all hopes of being an artist, and now, at twenty-six years of 
age, had again started life, this time as an author, and in 
competition, too, with Dickens who was one year his junior, 
and who at this time (1837-8) had reached almost the zenith 
of his reputation. 

All this was well known at the time. Macready says, in 
his Diary: "At Garrick Club where I dined and saw the 
papers. Met Thackeray, who has spent all his fortune, and 
is now about to settle in Paris, I believe, as an artist." 

Just as I had followed him the day before into The Cock, 
and occupied his seat at table, so now I studied the street over 
which he had dragged his weary steps, wondering, among 
other things, whether he had stopped, as I had, to measure 
with his eye the swing and crush of the traffic around 
him; wondering, too, whether the great dome of St. Paul's, 
dominating the cavernous gloom of the struggling, dirt- 
begrimed city, had not brought him, as it did me, a note of 

168 




FLEET STREET AND ST. PAUL S 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

dignity and rest. He loved it, I know, and loved to be 
beneath its shadow. One day, when Fields was with him, 
he was mentioning the various sights he had seen, when 
Thackeray interrupted. "But you haven't seen the great- 
est one yet," he said. "Go with me to-day to St. Paul's, 
and hear the charity children sing." So they went, and 
Mr. Fields noticed that Thackeray had his head bowed, 
and that his whole frame shook with emotion "as the chil- 
dren of poverty rose to pour out their anthem of praise." 

Thackeray himself tells us about it in one of the lec- 
tures on the Georges. "Five-thousand charity children, 
like nosegays, and with sweet, fresh voices, sing the hymn 
which makes every heart thrill with praise and happiness. 
I have seen a hundred grand sights in the world — corona- 
tions, Parisian splendours, Crystal Palace openings, Pope's 
chapels with their processions of long-tailed cardinals and 
quavering choirs of fat soprani, but thinking in all Chris- 
tendom there is no such sight as Charity Children's Day. 
Non Angli, sed Angeli. As one looks at that beautiful 
multitude of innocents, as the first note strikes; indeed, one 
can almost fancy that cherubs are singing." And else- 
where he has written: "To see a hundred boys marshalled 
in a chapel or old hall; to hear their sweet, fresh voices when 
they chant, and look in their brave, calm faces; I say, does 
not the sight and sound of them smite you, somehow, with 
a pang of exquisite kindness." 

The surge and crush is, no doubt, greater to-day than it 
was in Thackeray's time. The millions have pressed closer 
and the fight for footing has become more acute. But the 

171 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

great church still retains its unruffled dignity, with that 
peculiar aloofness from everything around and beneath it, 
which has characterized it since the day of its birth: the 
calm, silent dignity of the Sphinx, brooding as it sits, the 
silent shadowed past an open book, the vivid present an 
unsolved wonder. 

It was this last that I had come to see, and record — that 
uncanny roar and clash that beats against the blackened 
walls of the very church itself. But where could I find 
some coign of vantage from which to express it on my 
canvas? 

Evins, as was his habit in difficult situations, solved the 
problem. Indeed, now I look back upon my experiences, 
Evins solved most of my problems. We would pull, he 
suggested, up in front of the Cheshire Cheese about lunch 
hour, and then both the crowd and Bobby would look upon 
our wheel-room as a matter of right — there being a con- 
tinuous line of taxies, hansoms, and four-wheelers in front 
of its narrow slit of an entrance "around one o'clock." 

But this time, to my chagrin, the ruse did not work — 
not any longer than it took to set up my easel. 

"Beg yer pardon, sir, but 'ow long be you thinkhV o' 
staying 'ere?" 
"About two hours, Bobby." 

"Well, I don't know, sir. I'll try to keep 'em off, but 
it's a bad time o' the day. They do be getting out their 
stuff, and these 'ere express wagons will be drivin' up. 
I'll have to move yer furder along mebbe, or back; 'pends 
on 'ow they come. I'll do me best, sir." 

The easel was up now, Evins sharpening charcoals and 

172 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

picking up my rubber for me every time I dropped it. I 
work with both hands — the flat of the left, and the fingers 
of the right. 

''Come, move on, won't ye? Ye see what the gentle- 
man's doing — ye needn't crawl down his throat." This 
to a bread-line of boys edging along the footboard, to look 
over my shoulder. 

Another Bobby joined in. He had seen the mob from 
up the street and had moved down to find out what it was 
all about. Evins explained, and I kept at work, losing 
only the few seconds necessary to free one hand and give 
him a respectful salute. 

Every peddler in Fleet Street now swooped down — 
suspender men, postal-cards men, sellers of shoestrings, 
blacking, neckties, eye-glasses, soap, perfumery — every- 
thing that could be carried on a tray or strung around their 
necks. These while the two Bobbies were straightening 
out a cart tangle, formed a circle about me, shouting 
their wares — some of them being thrust under my chin. 

Then a calm ensued — so dead a calm that I looked about 
to find the cause. Across the street, on a pile of bricks — 
the debris of a building — the head of a photographer was 
hidden under a black cloth. The lens pointed my way. 
With him a moment later came his crowd. 

"Would you tell me what you are doing?" 

I pointed to my sketch. 

"Yes, I see, but what for?" 

"For the fun of it, principally." 

"Yes, but this is a hired taxi — comes rather high for 
fun, don't it?" 

173 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

I nodded and kept at work. 

"Would you tell me where you're from and what's your 
name?" 

I laid down my holder and looked up. Matters were 
drifting into the personal. 

"What's that got to do with it?" 
"Nothing to you, but it's a good deal to me. I'm from 
the Mirror" 

The officer's voice now broke in. 

"I'll have to ask ye to move on, sir. I 'ate to disturb 

ye, but " 

"All right, officer — just a minute more on the dome, 
— the sun is striking it now. Take a look while I put 
it in." 

It was Greek to Bobby, but I had excited his curiosity 
and gained his attention long enough for me to get a high 
light in the centre column surrounding the dome. 

"There — open the door, Evins, and let me out. Any- 
where now you say, officer — shall I send her off the 
street?" 

"No — move her down a bit, and let them goods wagons 
get closer. Thank ye, sir. I'll smoke it after dinner." 

The photographer bore down again. He now had his 
instrument under his arm — the black cloth around his 
throat. 

"American, aren't you?" 
"Yes. How did you know?" 

"Heard you talk. Won't you give me your name and 
tell me what you're doing? One of our editors saw you at 
work and sent me out." 

174 



IN THACKERAYS' LONDON 

''Will it do you any good?" 

"Rather." 

"How much?" 

"Might be ten bob — might be more." 

And that's how Evins and I got into the picture papers. 



175 



CHAPTER XV 

HARE AND LAMB COURT 
MIDDLE TEMPLE 



CHAPTER XV 

HARE AND LAMB COURT 
MIDDLE TEMPLE 

ON THE left of the hooded doorway, as seen in my 
sketch, are the chambers in which Thackeray 
studied law with Taprell — a profession to which 
he never took kindly. In a letter to his mother — he was 
then in his twenty-first year — he sketched himself in a 
blue coat on a high stool, with a queer client in the shape 
of an old gentleman with an umbrella, standing on one side, 
and a very small clerk in a green coat on the other, trying 
to get at his master with five folios by a stepladder. 

In another epistle he writes: 

"May 22, 1832. > . . The sun won't shine into 
Taprell's chambers, and the high stools don't blossom and 
bring forth buds. . . . I do so long for fresh air, and 
fresh butter I would say only it isn't romantic. . . . 
Yesterday I took a long walk to Kensington Gardens, and 
had a pleasant stroll on the green banks of the Serpentine. 
I wonder people don't frequent them more: they are far 
superior to any of the walks in Paris that are so much 
admired and talked of." 

It is from these same chambers at No. 1 Hare Court, 

179 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

that Thackeray, giving up for the time both Taprell's 
and the law, "strode away for a twelve hours' stretch over 
the moors of Cornwall to plunge headlong into the feverish 
delights of platform and canvassing — perhaps the keenest 
form of interest and excitement that can occupy the human 
brain. It is impossible once to indulge in it, and, for 
whatever reason, to give it up, without feeling a blank in the 
activities of life which is very difficult to fill. One can imag- 
ine how Thackeray threw himself into the battle. 

But alas for Taprell's! alas for the monthly income! and 
alas for the woolsack!" 

Of this escapade he writes to his mother on June 25, 1832, 
the letter being dated at Cornwall: 

"Are you surprised, dear Mother, at the direction? Cer- 
tainly not more prepared for it than I was myself, but you 
must know that on Tuesday in last week I went to breakfast 
with Charles Buller, and he received a letter from his con- 
stituents at Liskeard requesting him immediately to come 
down; he was too ill, but instead deputed Arthur Buller 
and myself — so off we set that same night by the mail, 
arrived at Plymouth the next day, and at Liskeard the 
day after, where we wrote addresses, canvassed farmers, 
and dined with attorneys. . . . 

"I have been lying awake this morning meditating on the 
wise and proper manner I shall employ my fortune in when 
I come of age, which, if I live so long, will take place in 
three weeks. First, I do not intend to quit my little cham- 
bers in the Temple, then I will take a regular monthly in- 
come which I will never exceed. . . . God bless you, 
dear Mother; write directly and give your orders. . . . 

180 








HARE COURT 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

Charles Buller comes down at the end of next week — if you 
want me sooner I will come, if not I should like to wait for 
the Reform rejoicings which are to take place on his arrival, 
particularly as I have had a great share in the canvassing." 
"In 1834," says Rideing, "he was called to the bar, and 
for some time he occupied chambers in the venerable build- 
ings with the late Tom Taylor. His rooms were then in an 
adjoining Court, at Number 10 Crown Office Row. Philip 
had chambers in the Temple, and there, also, in classic 
Lamb's Court, Pendennis and Warrington were located 
. . . Warrington smoking his cutty pipe, and writing 
his articles — the fine-hearted fellow, the unfortunate 
gentleman, the unpedantic scholar, who took Pendennis by 
the hand and introduced him to Grub Street when that 
young unfortunate came to the end of his means . . ." 

A dark, muggy, London day it was, when I opened my 
easel in front of the house that had seen the young fellow's 
first efforts to conquer a career, for to-day, as in Thackeray's 
time, the sun "does not shine in Taprell's Chambers," in 
Hare Court, nor out of it for that matter. Nor was there 
anybody about. All the rush, all the roar, and under-hum 
of the great city was gone as soon as I dived under the arch- 
way leading out of Fleet Street, and made my way down a 
narrow lane, into the solemn quiet of the Middle Temple. 
And the quiet continued as I passed down and into the 
small square of Brick Court where Thackeray had his 
chambers, and so on into the various Inns of Court one 
after another — Pump Court, Lamb Court, Crown Office 
Row, Hare Court, and the others. 

183 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

But desolate and abandoned as they were, the watchful 
eyes of the Imperial Government were open upon their soli- 
tudes. 

"I presume you have a permit, sir," came from a pleasant 
speaking individual with some kind of livery decorating his 
portly person — this before I had opened my easel. In- 
deed, he had been already snuffing around our heels, as a 
dog follows a basket, wondering what Evins was going to 
do with my kit when it was unstrapped. 

"Yes, I have a permit," and I drew the paper from my 
pocket. It had been sent me the day before by a good 
friend of mine — a distinguished member of the bar — 
Queen's Counsel, and all that sort of thing. 

"Yes, sir; all right, sir; we do have to be rather particular, 
sir." 

"Why?" 

"Well, sir, you see, sir " and he paused. 

"Never heard of anybody making off with a pair of 
marble steps, did you?" I inquired. 

"No, sir." 

"Nor of an iron railing, or: chimney, or some little thing 
like that being tucked under a visitor's arm and carried off 
as a souvenir?" 

"No, sir — not as I knows on. But it's all right, sir. 
Thank ye, sir," and a coin of the realm found its way down 
his side pocket. "If ye want me, sir, I'm outside there, and 
if I can do anything I should be " 

But I was already at work. 

Nothing I had yet seen and studied in my search for 
picturesque material for this book, had been so satisfying. 

184 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

Every square yard of the surface had echoed to the tread 
of Thackeray's feet, or those of his characters. The rooms 
on the third floor, over the entrance of the building in 
Lamb Court were those which Warrington and Pendennis 
occupied. The vines may not have been so thick in their 
day, and there have been some repairs here and there, but 
otherwise the outside is quite as when the two young men 
made it their home and the friendship between Warrington 
and Pendennis grew the closer. They had met at the mess, 
and when the dinner was over Warrington had asked Arthur 
where he was going. 

"I thought of going home to dress, and hear Grisi in 
* Norma,'" Pen said. 

"Are you going to meet anybody there?" he asked. 

Pen said: "No — only to hear the music," of which he 
was very fond. 

"You had much better come home and smoke a pipe with 
me," said Warrington — "a very short one. Come, I 
live close by in Lamb Court, and we'll talk over Boniface 
and old times." 

With the result that "Ere long Pen gave up his lodgings 
in St. James's, to which he had migrated on quitting his 
hotel, and found it was much more economical to take up 
his abode with Warrington in Lamb Court, and furnish 
and occupy his friend's vacant room there. For it must 
be said of Pen, that no man was more easily led than he to 
do a thing, when it was a novelty, or when he had a mind to 
it. And Pidgeon, the youth, and Flanagan, the laundress, 
divided their allegiance now between Warrington and 
Pen." 

185 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

Here, too, came Major Pendennis, Pen's uncle. 

"When Major Pendennis reached that dingy portal of 
the Upper Temple, it was about twelve o'clock in the 
day; and he was directed by a civil personage with a badge 
and a white apron, through some dark alleys, and under 
various melancholy archways each more dismal than the 
other, until finally he reached Lamb Court. If it was dark 
in Pall Mall, what was it in Lamb Court? Candles were 
burning in many of the rooms there, — in the pupil-room of 
Mr. Hodgeman, the special pleader, where six pupils were 
scribbling declarations under the tallow; in Sir Hokey 
Walker's clerk's room, where the clerk, a person far more 
gentlemanlike and cheerful in appearance than the cele- 
brated counsel, his master, was conversing in a patronizing 
manner with the managing clerk of an attorney at the door; 
and in Curling the wig-maker's melancholy shop, where, 
from behind the feeble glimmer of a couple of lights, large 
sergeants' and judges' wigs were looming drearily, with the 
blank blocks looking at the lamp-post in the court. Two 
little clerks were playing at toss-half penny under that 
lamp. A laundress in pattens passed in at one door, a 
newspaper boy issued from another. A porter, whose 
white apring was faintly visible, paced up and down. It 
would be impossible to conceive a place more dismal, and 
the Major shuddered to think that any one should select 
such a residence. 'Good God!' he said, 'the poor boy 
mustn't live on here.' The exquisite climbed up the black 
stairs until he came to the third story, where, at the sound 
of his footsteps a great voice inquired: 'Is that the beer? ' " 

And to these same dismal rooms Colonel Newcome brought 

186 




V- 




LAMB COURT 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

little Clive, who had come as a boy to Charter House, just 
before Pen left for the University. 

In Pump Court, there lived the Honourable Algernon 
Percy Deuceace, the distinguished card-sharper, while 
within reach of a mug of beer — so near that the bubbles 
would hold out until the mug arrived — were the Inns and 
Taverns made famous in Thackeray's pages, one of them, 
Shepherd's Inn, being kept by Mrs. Bolton, assisted by her 
daughter Fanny, whose story is told in "Pendennis," while 
Captain Costigan and Mr. Bows lived in the third floor at 
No. 4. 

These coinings of his brain, we can be sure, were the result 
of his early life spent in these same courts and chambers. 

For as Rideing says, "The man of letters cannot but love 
the place which has been inhabited by so many of his 
brethren, and peopled by their creations, as real to us at 
this day as the authors whose children they were. 

"Sir Roger de Coverley walking in the Temple garden," 
says Mr. Thackeray "and discoursing with Mr. Spectator 
about the beauties in hoops and patches who are sauntering 
over the grass, is just as lively a figure to me, as old Samuel 
Johnson rolling through the fog with the Scotch gentleman 
at his heels, on their way to Mr. Goldsmith's chambers in 
Brick court, or Harry Fielding, with inked ruffles and a wet 
towel round his head, dashing off articles at midnight for the 
Covent Garden Journal, while the printer's boy is asleep in 
the passage." 

What of alterations, scrapings, patchings up and fillings 
in have taken place in these various courts and their sur- 

189 



IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

roundings, I have not troubled myself to find out. Nothing 
looks new in London after the fogs and soot of one winter 
have wreaked their vengeance upon it. Whether the facade 
is of brick, stone or stucco, depends entirely on what the pre- 
vailing winds, whirling the smoke aside, have saved it from, 
or what some kindly water spout has wrought, scouring as 
it drenches — as may be seen in many of the statues on 
Burlington House, where a head, arm, or part of a pedestal 
chair has been kept white by a constant douche. 

As for me, I am glad that these old haunts of Mr. Thack- 
eray and his characters are even blacker to-day than they 
might have been in his time. For the soot and grime be- 
comes them, and London as well for that matter. A great 
impressionist, this smoke-smudger, and wiper-out of detail; 
this believer in masses and simple surfaces this destroyer 
of gingerbread ornaments, petty mouldings, and cheap 
flutings ! 

Restored or not, it is the same old Middle Temple, 
hidden away from the turmoil of the great city, the home 
of the recluse and the student. It is also the home of my 
friends, and so I shall leave my card again on Mr. Thack- 
eray at No. 2 Brick Court, and on Messrs. Warrington and 
Pendennis at their chambers on the third floor of Lamb 
Court, and on one or two others in Fig Tree and Pump 
Courts, and shall hope to find them at home the very next 
time I go to London. 



190 



CHAPTER XVI 
LONDON BRIDGE 



CHAPTER XVI 
LONDON BRIDGE 

AUTHORS, poets, statesmen, soldiers, painters, mer- 
chants, civilians, cut-throats, and other nimble- 
fingered gentlemen have, from time to time, been 
either identified with London Bridge itself, or with some of 
its nearby features. 

No less a person than the immortal John Bunyan, that 
worthy chronicler of the progress of the pilgrim, had his 
lodgings at one time on the Bridge itself — when it was a 
sort of Ponte Vecchio of the period. Philip Massinger, the 
author of "The British Theatre," is buried in the Church- 
yard of St. Mary Overy, afterward St. Saviour's, South- 
wark, "at the end of London Bridge." Sir Thomas More, 
having lost his head on Tower Hill, had that portion of his 
body "putt upon London Bridge where as trayter's heads 
are sett upon poles, and having remained some moneths, 
there being to be cast into the Thames, because roome 
should be made for diverse others who in plentiful sorte 
suffered martyrdome for the same supremacie; shortly 
after it was brought by his daughter Margarett, lease 
— as she stoutly affirmed before the Councill, being 
called before them for the same matter — it should be 

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IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

foode for fishes which she buried where she thought 
fittest." 

Samuel Pepys, after regaling himself at The Cock in 
Fleet with Mrs. Knipp and other ladies of his acquaintance 
would betake himself to "the Beare Inn, Southwark at the 
foote of London Bridge." The divine William lived as 
late as 1609, says Knight in his "London," in the street 
known, as Clink Street, Southwark, during which time he 
was associated with the Globe Theatre on the Bank side, 
which was built in 1594, and was under the management 
of the same Company as the Blackfriar's, but on the other 
side of the Thames, and not far from the southern end of 
Old London Bridge. John Suckling, whom Aubrey de- 
scribed as "an extraordinary accomplished gentleman who 
grew famous at Court for his readie sparkling witt, as being 
uncomparably readie at repartying, and as the greatest 
gallant of his time," and who "died a bachelor in Paris, 
and of poyson," was also a frequenter at the Bear-at-the- 
Bridge-Foot. "One of the best bowlers of his time in Eng- 
land," continues Aubrey. "He play'd at Cards rarely well 
and did use to practise by himself abed, and there studyed 
the best way of managing the Cards. I remember his 
Sisters comeing to the Piccadillo, Bowling Green, crying for 
feare he should lose all their portions." 

With all these memories, traditions and historical hap- 
penings, linked with its very existence, it is impossible to 
believe that Mr. Thackeray was not as fully conversant 
with its associations and surroundings as he was with St. 
Paul's, or Fleet Street. And yet, I can find only the most 
casual reference to it in his books. 

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IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

This is more remarkable because many of his brother 
authors had sought inspiration in and about these same 
blackened nooks and corners, and had proved their value 
as settings for fiction. 

Mr. Dickens, who both glorified and made real many of 
its forgotten and overlooked quarters, had in the be- 
ginning of his career, revived for his readers in the 
"Pickwick Papers," "that queer old tavern, the * George,' 
with its quaint courtyard" — but ten minutes' walk from 
the far end of the Bridge, and which I am glad to say still 
exists, for I visited it the day I made the sketch accompany- 
ing this chapter. 

It will be remembered that it was in the courtyard of the 
George that Sam Weller, being at the time "boots" of the 
hostelry, first met Mr. Pickwick when on his way to catch 
Jingle and Miss Wardle — a bit of information current at 
the time the "Pickwick Papers" were being issued, and 
which, if it reached Mr. Thackeray's ears at all (and it must 
have done so), would have sent him post-haste to look the 
spot over, he being particularly anxious, as we all know, to 
illustrate the book. 

It may be that he felt that Mr. Dickens had preempted 
the locality, so to speak, and had thus avoided it. Then, 
again, this was an open air background, and not a closed 
drawing-room, or cozy tavern — places almost always used 
by him when in search of "local colour." 

But that he loved the great, gray mass, standing waist- 
deep in the waters, its strong arms held out to either 
bank, I have no shadow of doubt. 

For a great Bridge it was in his time and still is in ours: 

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IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

dignified, solemn, conscious of its strength, unruffled — 
even when thousands of insects on wheels crawl over its 
backbone, or lumbering tows sweep beneath its arches. 

As for its solidity: Were it a ledge of primeval rock 
straddling the river, with holes scooped out to let its 
floods pass in safety, it could not appear to be more per- 
manent or more irresistible. The houses of Parliament 
themselves might come swooping down with a mighty on- 
slaught, and the old Bridge would but hunch one shoulder of 
its abutments in defence, and the whole mass would crum- 
ble as does a field of ice, in its pitch over a dam. 

And the width and length of it ! — on top, under the arches 
and at each end: So wide that one must look over the 
parapet to be convinced that it is not one of London's 
streets; so high, that everything about it is dwarfed; so 
long, that the farther end is lost in a gray film. 

Evins, to whom every foot of it was as well known as the 
"down grade" to Paddington station, or the "turn in" at 
Charing Cross, learning that I wanted to see it "broadside 
on," whirled the cab to the left — we had just come over 
from the "George Inn" — twisted down a breakneck lane, 
around some warehouses, and so out upon a sort of landing 
a few feet above the water line, bristling with heavy iron 
cranes. Here were square wooden floats bearing idle row- 
boats — huge affairs which would hold a ship's entire crew 
— had held them no doubt. 

"There ye are, sir, and ye can see the Tower Bridge fur- 
ther up, and if it wasn't for Ben Tillett and a lot of other 
fools who do be wanting to cut their noses off to spite their 
ugly mugs, you'd have the river covered with lighters and 

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IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

tows, which it ain't been these four weeks, owing to the 
dock strike which is still on." 

But there were boats aplenty; even the vociferous labour 
leader could not quite empty the rolling Thames, or spoil 
the scene for me. A lively, impudent tug was puffing 
flares of white steam into the face of the gray monster, and 
away up the lane of glistening silver my eyes rested on tiny 
croton bugs which must have been isolated scows, either 
adrift or anchored, while up against the sky was a little 
embroidered edging which proved to be the huge stone rail 
or parapet guarding the footway. Behind this, moved 
little dots of heads and flat crawly things which turned out 
to be vans and omnibuses, with smaller dots fringing their 
tops. Over all shone one of those luminous ground-glass 
skies that one sometimes sees in London when the night's 
rain and wind have swept away the smoke, and things 
stand out and are real. 

And with the crisp joyousness of everything about me 
came a note of sadness. I had lived with My Master for 
weeks, thought only of him, and at times had almost felt 
the warmth of his hand in mine. Now the end had come. 
This was my last sketch. On the morrow I must say 
good-bye both to him and to his haunts. Yes, it was all 
over — the work finished and the charcoal box closed. 
It would be colour now along the lagoons of my beloved 
Venice. 

And I had another farewell to say, for this was also my 
last day with Evins. 

"Paris to-morrow," I said to him, in reluctant tones, as 
I laid down my charcoal. 

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IN THACKERAY'S LONDON 

"Yes, sir, so the porter at Jules's told me. I'll be 
around, sir, early, and take ye to Victoria station." 

"I hate to go, Evins — now that we have got to know 
each other," I added. 

"And I hate to have ye, sir. Been a great month — 
nothing to do but sit still and see ye bang away. Easiest 
job I ever struck. Ye must be getting hungry, sir; shall 
I go for a bottle and a sandwich?" 

"No, Evins, I'd rather have a table somewhere. Where 
will it be? The Cock, Cheshire Cheese, or around here?" 

"Better make it The Cock, sir. Nothing 'round here 
but tripe and pigs' feet, and but little of them." 

"Make it The Cock, then, Evins." 

And so it was. 



THE END 



314-77-7 



V 



